OTM draft Part 1 - INTRO

A friend once asked me “If you had a choice between instantly having absolute wealth, absolute intelligence or absolute beauty, which one would you prefer?

If I ever were to encounter a situation in which I could immediately fulfill any of the three choices at stake, I would undoubtedly and instinctively pick absolute beauty. After all, how many times had I had to wax, shave, cream, brush, conceal, diet, style, exercise or even planned to be cut and stitched without ever feeling truly satisfied with my looks?

But why was this reflection upon my friend´s question the first one to pop into my mind? Was I that shallow to wonder about beauty before wealth and intelligence? After all, from a logical point of view, either absolute wealth or absolute intelligence would in the end lead me to my desire for beauty, as the first could buy it for me and the later could help me figure out how to optimally achieve it. Either way, my central focus of concern remained connected to only one of the choices offered, regardless of which one I ultimately chose. This realization made me feel uneasy, as matters of beauty always did, and I sensed that my inadequate feelings towards the nature of my thoughts had been purposely provoked. My friend knew me well enough to figure out that when it came to beauty, no other alternative reality would suffice my thirst for physical perfection.

It therefore made little sense for her to ask me something she already knew the answer to. There had to be something behind her question to which my obvious confession would signify a chain of events I had yet to understand. “Intelligence”, I said, resisting falling into the confession trap my friend had set up for me, wondering if the more politically correct answer would  shackle my friends false inquiry and give me glimpse of her intentions. “Why?” She asked smiling. I could see she had figured out my decoy and was playing along with my public resolution. “Because with absolute intelligence I could learn all the languages in the world that would enable me to talk to whomever I wanted at the after party I would attend after receiving two Nobel Prices, a Peace one and a Science one for creating a mathematical formula for world peace”.

As my friend laughed out loud I started fidgeting with my thumb. My face was all smiles, but I was actually experiencing a familiar panging nervousness that accompanied me whenever I wanted to hide feeling uncomfortable, sad or impotent. Those were the three feelings that usually accompanied me back then, always one or the other and sometimes two or all of them together. The index finger in my right hand kept circling the nail on my thumb, and my increasingly sweaty palms couldn´t help to disguise the faint scratching sound of my caressing dry skin. Apparently my friend had also come aware of the strange sound too, as she stopped dead in her laugh and looked at my right hand, which I quickly lay still. She looked me straight in the eye and said “Are you ok?”