Each to Their Own

A friend of mine - whom I happen to love to bits and pieces, and with whom there's such a synchrony between us, I sometime wonder if she exists or if she isn't but a strange astral reflection of myself talking to me from a farway place in the planet - is preparing to make a trip to Tel Aviv. It made me blink a couple of times, since I wouldn't have thought of Tel Aviv as a place to go visit. Then again, I would hardly go visit anything in Africa (except for South Africa, where I'd make sure to go to a rugby game to watch the Springboks play ^_^). You know very well by now that you wouldn't catch me dead near Egypt, and though I love Europe (I'm a big Europe junkie, so to speak) there are countries in Europe I wouldn't visit simply because there's nothing in there that tickles my imagination... even if I have never seen them in the flesh.

There's some people like my boyfriend, who'd simply love to get to know the whole planet, so every destination you tell him about sounds appealing, except maybe those where there's currently war or some situation that makes them dangerous. There's other people who aren't interested in knowing the whole planet. Some of these have preferences towards the fashionable destinations of the moment, such as U.S., particularly Orlando or Miami, L.A. or New York, or Egypt, France - particularly Paris, England - particularly London, and so on. Others, like my friend and I, prefer destinations that have something to say to us, places we have read of from books, or upon which I've got addicted out of curiosity, a hobby or a simple whim. Such are Tel Aviv, Sofia and even Helsinki.

As with travel destinations, we often have different opinions and different tastes about all sorts of things. There are things you might consider fabulous that others would consider insane and incomprehensible, and there are things that you consider simply unthinkable, but which for others are just amazing.

Another friend of mine said recently that she was taken aback at how someone declared not to like her based on how she writes on the Facebook. Someone she doesn't know, has never met and has never even interacted with online. At all. This got me thinking about how many are quick to condemn, pass a sentence upon others without getting to know them better, find out if the first impressions are right - which are usually not, what makes such overestimation of it so dangerous. People is more than their choices, and though their choices often signal about them, what they think, what kind of world they'd love to live it and so on, those choices are not as transparent as we want to believe. Not everybody makes empty, flippant choices, not two people watch the same movie for the same reasons (thought those who go watching Magic Mike are sure on one and the same set of mind! ^_^). Some of us prepare to go discover Tel Aviv, some of us prefer to spend summer as far up North as possible. Judge, yes - because judging is knowing - but don't pass sentence until you haven't had the whole case laid out and know the reasons for the choices.