ECHO 7/3/06

A couple – a conflict, based on irresolvable differences.

One of them is capable of great leaps of faith and hope, and possesses the ability to ‘switch on’ optimism and joy at will, despite any other feelings - a product of choice and a healthy upbringing. The other is a fatalist whose joy is a more sporadic visitor – a product of experience and upbringing.

We are witness to decades of conditioning through experience, life journeys resulting in two people falling in love but discovering a point where their essences differ incontrovertibly. How can these differences ever hope to be reconciled? This discovery is painful and is why their relationship is now in jeopardy.

One offers to change – treatment, drugs, a concerted effort. The other doesn’t wish that; they wish for change but nor that. Their concepts of life are steady monoliths that can never meet. Yet how it that together they are capable of great love, joy, laughter?

It is a situation that could be resolved given time. But they don't have much left.