"Let's..."

Diversions apart, for the last few months, the subject has been, you will recall, an exploration of the ideas of imposition, freedom, invitation, refusal, boundaries. Let us continue to nose forward.

Footnote: I do a little voluntary teaching of English, belatedly perhaps, since the language has been my most enduring passion. Yesterday, Marta said (in Spanish): But what is this "let"? Is it "allow"? Is it "leave"? It is "rent"? When we say "Let's go!", ¡Vamos!,  what kind of "let" is that? 

"Let" is a word fundamentally associated with permission, which is not quite freedom, but getting there. I'll let you take the car.  Or it suggests a proposal for some shared activity: Let's go.  Of whom though are we asking permission?  Perhaps it is an incantation to the universe: Allow us to go / May we go; or perhaps it is to one another:  All being well, let us go, may we go, may we eat, may we drink to that.

Actually, "let's" implies an impetus more on one side than the other, a leader, an instigator.  "Shall we..." suggests more of an equilibrium.  But sometimes a relationship needs that impetus. It depends on the personalities.

Freedom is often thought of collectively - "a free society" - or individually "You are free to go". Rarely do we think of freedom as a joint activity and yet this perhaps is where it is most delicate. Let's dance..., a proposal, Shall we dance?, a suggestion; May I kiss you - will you allow me, although in all but one case this request has always struck me as a misreading of an atmosphere.  The exception was from a man suffering from PTSD, for whom everything was different. 

There is a nuance of difference in the two words, "proposal" and "suggestion". In any case,  we agree to dance, to meet, to engage in some joint activity freely - and can step away at any point. But it is there, in that space of engagement and freedom that special things can happen.  

Marriage is not quite the same.  Marriage or a partnership where there are children, is - arguably - an agreement to stick through things, even when we may not want to, even when we would rather be free. Some find that agreement brings its own rewards.

It astonished me when a friend, a man I know well, who doesn't like travelling alone, announced not long ago that he was departing on a Mediterranean cruise with a woman he barely knew - in a shared cabin. He is easygoing but nevertheless, anticipating this arrangement struck me as having all the elements of a fiasco.  It felt rather like watching someone build a Jenga tower.  Yesterday he showed me the photos. But are there none of the woman you went with?

Ay, qué mujer tan rara, he replied. She had been odd, had taken all the space in the cabin for herself, she had criticised his choices in food, in drink, in how he spent his time. 

I left her to it, barely saw her, he said.

Did you still manage to enjoy the trip?

Absolutely! I made friends, chatted, had a wonderful time.

Well that's good! And now would you travel alone?

I still prefer to travel with someone but if I couldn't find someone, now I would go alone.

He would not have done that before and he is no spring chicken. An experience of control led him to value the pleasures of freedom. Evidently this is something that can happen at any age.

Decades ago, in my twenties, I went on a summer day trip to a beach with a man. The journey from London was hellish - hot, tense, traffic jams. It was before good internet on phones.  I was driving, he couldn't navigate. But we got there, Littlehampton I think. The sun shone, the sky and sea were blue, I wore a pink dress. There are no photos from that day but I see it in Technicolor.   His eyes and hair were dark, his demeanour, wry, as ever and yet, for once and at moments he seemed to relax. In that fragile balance, possibilities expanded. The boundaries of that day were different because we normally met in bars and restaurants in grimy, grown up London. And then it all vanished on the way back. He mentioned he would have liked to have taken the train back over the South Downs. And suddenly, there we were, both stuck in the car again, stranded as it were, on a salt pan, freedom having evaporated in the contrast between a reality and a desire that things were otherwise. 

Sometimes the footnote becomes the main event.