Life Lessons

I've never been a a fan of English Literature. In fact, I failed the subject miserably in high school probably (more like most certainly) from not trying. I just despised it and hated the idea of being forced to read for passing grades rather than for the love of the book. Granted there were some good books forced upon us but eventually the bad ones won out and my love for reading kinda went through the door. I remember having to examine certain phrase and find it's source in literature. I asked my grandfather and he was able to just rattle it off. That phrase was: "Neither a borrower nor lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. And this above all, to thine own self be true...." I remember him jokingly saying that most phrases given to look up come from one of two places, The Bible or Shakespeare. This one came from Shakespeare...Polonius preparing his son Laertes for foreign travel in the play "Hamlet". This phrase has been relived so many times in modern society and is as true today as it was then. Think about our own financial dealings. So many times we've tied ourselves into the credit cards and bank loans and the hire purchase that we can't even breathe at the end of the month. The pay cheque belongs to somebody else and we are forced to beg borrow or steal to survive till the next pay cheque (which incidentally isn't ours either). I've been a lender on a few ocassions and I've managed to recover a few of those loans. I keep telling myself that I won't do this again and still I keep getting myself into these kinds of dilemna. I loaned some funds to a friend who was in deep hot water at the time and I had a little bit extra from some allowance or the other so I decided to help out a situation, since this person has helped me out in the past. Now getting back the funds is the hard part. Now I'm not saying that things are not hard because I know the situation but I can't help but feel a bit slighted since I don't see the effort necessary to repay my funds. Case in point, this person came into some extra money recently and chose to repay some outstanding bills from whenever with a "plan" to repay me out of the second part of her payout. To date that promise is yet to materialize. My question is, "Is it because I am a friend why I am not a priority?" Now I've seen this person "beg" tickets to the Jazz Festival and get sponsorship for other things which to me are not of any priority and yet I am still awaiting my money. Now in very much the same way that you can acquire these expensive sponsorship to these events I think you could acquire sponsorship to help repay the debts that you have. My thought would be that if I know I owe so many people so much money then three nights of singing no matter who the artistes would not be paramount on my agenda. In fact I would certainly be keeping my little tooshy quiet. I guess some of us think differently. Who knows, maybe I wanted to go to the Jazz Festival too but couldn't spare the funds because all I had extra is tied up in a loan to somebody. I know I will be repaid, that's not the point, my only concern is when. Everytime I think about it I have a new round of depression and anger and disbelief all rolled into one. This is my friend treating me this way. And yes the person is still a friend and will remain that way because despite whatever is not so right there are more than enough good thing about them to make me overlook this shortcoming. The writing here is because I just need to vent a bit. One thing I can assure you is that it won't happen again not with this person at any rate.