If we get bored together, it means we understand each other.
PalmIn general, there are two groups of people: those we can simply be with and those with whom we necessarily have to do something. If you don't believe me, take a quick look at your friends and family (or even your partner). The people with whom we always have to do something are those with whom—intentionally or not—we make plans, those with whom we always have something to do, making them feel somewhat incomplete. I have nothing against a friend who goes for a run, a friend who goes to the movies, or a parent who finds a shared hobby with their children to spend time together. But allow me to doubt that these are the people who truly know us.
Inevitably, the people we are simply with tend to be those with whom we spend the most time. It's a matter of probability: there comes a point when entertainment, imagination, or money run dry, and our company has no other aim than to share the same space and time. With the people I feel I can just be with—and not have to do anything else—trust gives me the license to stop pretending and abandon expectations. They free me from the need to appear busy, idle, doing anything other than being together. It allows me not to have to make it worthwhile.
The people with whom I feel I don't have to do anything, with whom I can just be, are the ones who make me feel enough, whole, complete. With them, I sign a pact that contains a single condition, which is our presence, making it self-sufficient. And we grant each other our blind faith: carte blanche, let whatever happens, happen. The people I know how to be with are an open door to improvisation and, at the same time, those with whom I have the most honest relationships. We experience each other raw, without artifice, exposed. Just the other person and me, and an indefinite amount of time ahead to fill with whatever may be. They are the ones who make me feel as if I were naked and alone on a stage. And that's why they're also the ones who sharpen my wit the most—the ones who train me to be a better conversationalist, a better entertainer, a better storyteller—and the most generous—they test me and reveal new talents that others will later enjoy.
The people I simply choose to be with have the virtue and the responsibility of being valuable in themselves. They have the ability to make time seem more relative. With them, hours have value regardless of how we use them; we don't need to carry them around to feel we've earned them; we can't do nothing and have everything. They're the only people with whom I grant myself the privilege of being bored again, like when every sunset was dull, sitting on the bench in Plaça del Tub, watching life and the skaters go by, with an iPod in hand.
There's a certain intimacy in being bored with someone. I used to want a house so I could be bored with my friends. Living in a house that was more or less our own was the milestone after adulthood, allowing us to continue doing what made us truly young: telling each other about life, sprawled on the sofa in our socks. That's why, when I have them at home, I like to prolong the time we spend simply being together. I make an effort to entertain them, in the English sense of the word,entertain: to show hospitality to (to show hospitality),' although they experience it more in the Catalan sense, 'to entertain: to keep someone in a place (who is going about their business).' They link one thing to another, without skipping a single step of the atavistic ritual of having guests: the aperitif with beers, chips, and pickles; lunch, with a few glasses of wine; dessert, along with coffee; the after-dinner drinks and cocktails, which vary depending on the selection of liquors we have in the bar cabinet, and which are always accompanied by nuts and sweets. My main mission is not to give them any chance to leave, to see how far we are capable of entertaining each other out of sheer boredom.
I like to spoil them, my friends. Besides a house to bore myself with them, I fantasized about a car to take them wherever we wanted when we got tired of being bored. This was my only motivation when I got my driver's license: to have a car where we could all fit and a Bluetooth radio to choose our songs according to the moodAccording to fate: La Oreja de Van Gogh, Rihanna, Plan B. The rest didn't matter to me. I thought we didn't need anything more than free will, a house, and a car. And now, we're forgetting that we have all of this. We've stopped being aware that we're in one of the moments when we'll have the most freedom in our lives, as if what's important isn't so much what we do as the simple fact of being.
