Degrees of Separation

I don't know whether it's too late for the last of the beach roses but I hope not. I know there will be many fat red rose hips. But I'll gladly let someone else pick and process them for tea. I'm taking a break for a couple of days on Cape Cod - it's warm and supposed to stay warm -- hurray! Then I'll have many, I hope, nice autumnal pictures. Somewhere I have a picture of beach roses but not at hand, sorry.

Today I spent much edge-of-the-mind time thinking about degrees of separation. Many people know John Guare's play, SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION, which I kept remembering. Today's job was transcribing an interview with a well known actress. She spoke of a long affair with a certain actor and of another, who I know to be a freind of the frist, as a good friend of hers. These two actors are people I have met, tho' only briefly, because they visited the psychiatrist I worked for some time ago. So that put me only three degrees away from this woman whose life I was learning about in some depth. For those who do not know the play -- or the movie made from it -- the premise is that everyone is connected to everyone else on earth by only "six degrees of separation" if you can find the connections. Figuring out degrees can be a pointless exercise ... so what if I'm three degrees from this woman?

I do not accept the premise about "anyone on earth" but it's too bad we can't all act as if it were true. We might then relalize that that all humans are more alike than diifferent, and gain some compassion for people who not at all, on the surface of our lives, like us. Thinking about yesterday's post, it makes me a bit queasy to think of being related to that comedian. Sometimes we can think about things perhaps a little more than makes us comfortable. But then who promised us comfort? And isn't it good to look at the uncomfortable now and then?