My friend (Vetline)

Vetline is very defensive. That’s pretty much summarize Vetline. That’s the blog.

Okey, okey, I am just kidding. How can I only use three sentences to be done with Vetline? True, there are no memorable stories about him (since he was very cautious and defensive, so he was never controversial enough to make good stories). However, nothing can stop me from making judgments about a person by connecting small dots. As you all know, I am super judgmental, and put everyone under my microscope without mercy.

Vetline is a great person, but he does not want to admit it. That’s how defensive he can get. I was in the same dorm with him. He was handsome and kind. He had his strong beliefs towards almost everything, but he tried very hard to hide his core beliefs. He was smart enough to put up some peripheral stuff on the surface, so when people attacked, he was safe (For example, I regard his strong “nationalism” sentiment as such a peripheral belief). I never figured out why he grew up to be like that, with such a strong ironic combination of ambition and caution. One thing for sure, he used this strategy only for self-protection. He never used it as a weapon against other people. In fact, he tried hard to feed you what you wanted to hear and what you wanted him to do, and sometimes you began to neglect that small portion of insincerity.

I know this above paragraph is rather harsh. I am sorry that I felt that way, because I am one of his good friends. He is a great person, so great that a small imperfection like that really stands out to bother me. So I have to get it out before I write about his greatness.

I still remembered that I had some long conversation with him in the dark of the night. I can no longer remember the contents, but I am sure these conversations were not very personal. Both of us tried to hide our personal problems, but talked about things on a higher level, like national education, the meaning of life, the way politics should work, stuff like that. These conversations never made me a better person, but rather, they made me a smarter person. To some extent, he and I were quite the same. We were not personal, we hid our emotions, we put up masks to protect our self-esteems, we always meant good to other people, thinking of other people’s reactions all the time. That’s how we got attracted to each other to be friends, but that’s also the reasons why our friendship never took off to be one of the greatest.

I visited his city during my stay in China. In fact, he is the reason why I took the trip to Shanghai in the first place, because he told me that he got married and he got a new apartment. I got there and was welcome warmly. As usual, I paid special attention to their interactions to figure out what is going on. The amazing part is how the girl is able to poke fun of Vetline’s defensiveness and still make him comfortable. Now here is the more amazing part: Vetline actually liked it when he was made fun by the girl. Why? Well, here is my understanding. Think of a kid. He would normally avoid a hug from a stranger, but he would allow his dad to throwing him around. Rationally thinking, he would more likely to be harmed by his dad’s throw than a stranger’s hug. However, the trust makes the kid to fall for his dad. In fact, he even gets a thrill from being threatened but being safe. I regard Vetline’s relationship with the girl as the same. Feeling safe, Vetline could finally relax to forget about all the defensive strategies and enjoy personal interactions in their natural state. I am happy for him, and I hope he is enjoying these relaxed interactions much better than those philosophical, political, sociological and personal conversations that we all said we enjoyed (I lied if I used to say so).

Well, this blog is my most unsatisfied blog of my friends so. Vetline is one of my good friends, but Vetline was a person who provided me with few stories to tell (Cautious and guarded, he probably hardly makes the main actor of any people’s memories. In fact, without my last visit to him, I would never imagine). I tried my best, only finding that I over-used my rational analysis. Who knows? Maybe it is my defensiveness that puts him on the same gear, or maybe I am totally wrong about him, or maybe he acted very differently to different people, so what I got here is a very small glimpse of his personality. I want to finish this blog with a last story. When I arrived at Shanghai, I was read to tell Vetline a personal event which happened one day before to me. But eventually, I did not. I guess I was not at ease, and I did not understand why. As friends, we share a lot, everything but personal events. It is fortunate that our friendship would be always stable and rational, but it is also sad that we probably realized the masks between us, but never able to take them down.