Endlessly Amazed
Endlessly, you know, amazed
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2020
- Messages
- 1,379
- Location
- Arizona, USA
Krepostnoi: "I've got an old school friend who's made a very successful career in the FCO (or whatever they call it these days). Put it this way, he's not yet 50, and he's already an ambassador. But he's had to be very careful about his contacts, and he made the decision not to continue a particular relationship with someone who was otherwise absolutely fantastic for him on every level because a couple of aspects of her biography would have combined to become career stoppers for him."
The first time I ran across this type of situation was in Laurence Durrell's "The Alexandria Quartet" 40 years ago. Oddly enough, it made me think deeply about the type of person who would make decisions about a personal relationship based on how it would appear to a third party in order to support career decisions. Also, how I would react to that situation, and how I would react to a person who made personal choices based on calculating the ramifications to a job.
Even though Durrell was an alcoholic, and was pretty unpleasant in some of his personal relationships, I think he captured the introspection of careerists perfectly. The Alexandria Quartet was the best of Durrell's writings, I think. Nothing else he wrote, in either poetry or prose, came close. For close to 30 years, I reread the entire Quartet annually to remind myself of the transformative nature of love.
The first time I ran across this type of situation was in Laurence Durrell's "The Alexandria Quartet" 40 years ago. Oddly enough, it made me think deeply about the type of person who would make decisions about a personal relationship based on how it would appear to a third party in order to support career decisions. Also, how I would react to that situation, and how I would react to a person who made personal choices based on calculating the ramifications to a job.
Even though Durrell was an alcoholic, and was pretty unpleasant in some of his personal relationships, I think he captured the introspection of careerists perfectly. The Alexandria Quartet was the best of Durrell's writings, I think. Nothing else he wrote, in either poetry or prose, came close. For close to 30 years, I reread the entire Quartet annually to remind myself of the transformative nature of love.