I awoke from a dream in which I was Harold (from the TV show “Person of Interest”) on a bus listening to John helping a woman, promising her chocolate, something she longed for, against the life of taking abuse that she was enduring and would be going back to. Then I interacted, saying I was Harold, and she heard my laugh as Frank’s laugh and I realized we had been spotted. Forced open the bus doors, and John and I ran, of course in different directions. As I write this, I realize, it was near Sacred Heart High School, my Catholic high school before I went to public high school. I ran past a place offering air travel. I said, joking, I’d fly if I didn’t have to get into an airplane, and kept running.
Interpretation? Helpful hints, at least?
Harold is the introverted, bookish one. John is the man of action. Harold was observing John interacting, then he announced his own presence; then they had to flee as usual to avoid capture.
I was identifying with the man of action as well as the introvert?
Well, you were at least approving of him, and humorously announcing your allegiance.
John was being kind to her.
That is part of his job description, after all – the job description Harold gave him.
I have been thinking, lately, how unfitted I was to deal with the world.
Yet you did it. Well or badly, even by your own measurement, you did interact, perforce. And your Harold approved of your John, set him in motion, mandated kindness.
Yet John is a man of violence.
“Person of Interest” is a Western, set in futuristic terms. The lone cowboy, the marshal with his posse, the friends working together in the absence of law –
Harry Morgan. [Hemingway’s protagonist in To Have and Have Not]
And as you have pointed out, Harry Morgan is not a bad man, only a man in an unfavorable context, not well understood, a man on his own who learns that a man on his own can’t make it any more in a complicated society.
But John isn’t on his own. For one thing, he has Harold, and Harold’s resources.
That’s right, Harold.
And you in turn are my Harold, I suppose.
A good enough analogy, provided you don’t apply it to chasing crooks. But every man of action is backed up by an introverted, often unseen or even unsuspected link to greater resources, often invisible ones.
Defining “man of action” here, as individuals in 3D. So, running past SHHS?
That’s your past. You weren’t running to it, nor toward it, but by it. And your joke in passing – that you would fly if you didn’t have to get into an airplane – is representative. You want to fly, you can’t be cooped up in a defined space where you can be identified and detained. Think of the Harold and John analogy from time to time: It will illumine your situation.