The Lame Game

Earlier tonight I went out with some family and friends for Vietnamese food.  After a hearty supper in good company, I walked one friend, Duncan, to the College/Spadina streetcar stop.  We waited more than half an hour (an unusually long wait) for the streetcar to arrive but thankfully found ourselves engaged in some interesting conversation.

I commented to my friend, Duncan, that I imagine him as my own personal Oscar Wilde.  He said that it was a ludicrous idea that, if true, warranted me "finding another personal Oscar Wilde."  I then went on to compare my brother to Stephan Dion, the former head of the Liberal Party of Canada, in terms of intellectual clout and forthright honesty.  Duncan said that I didn't do my brother credit and that Dion's failures as an MP eclipsed his otherwise virtuous personality.  So I got to thinking about the merits of such comparisons and realized that although most are just fun to do and don't have much practical application there is one important merit to them: when we compare personalities we isolate traits in an uncommonly analytic way and, as a consequence, learn more about ourselves and those we compare.  In the case of my friend Duncan he's very similar to Oscar Wilde in that he can confront most things with a sense of humour or wit but, unlike Oscar Wilde, he is also able to accept the true gravitas of serious situations and consequences.

I don't mean to lecture (or be any other kind of lame) and I hope to write about more interesting things in future but I hope that any reader, including myself in future, can take something from this message.