If you are enamoured with haggling and getting a deal it can be difficult to understand that others may not share the same orientation. What you enjoy may be near an anathema to them. It can be a  complete non sequitur. I have been in a number of situations in which people have sought to haggle, niggle and generally negotiate and from which I have walked away never to be seen again. “Fuck this for a game of soldiers” is not a mentality well understood by some. I do not like to haggle or “negotiate”. I am unreasonable, not easily “reasoned” with or otherwise manipulated. Attempts to get me to be “reasonable” have failed on numerous occasions often to the complete surprise of others. I have walked off into the sunset never to be seen again.

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I am not a haggler; I do not seek a bargain or a deal.

People who like to argue the toss find this difficult to understand and do not incorporate this into their calculations or machinations. It does not occur to them that they might never ever see me again. They may wonder “what the hell just happened”.

It is no big deal. There are plenty of reasonable people out there with whom it is easy to make a deal. In the grand scheme of things I am no loss. I am perhaps just too much trouble. Cunning plans can fail and badly so. It is easy to find someone to work with, who is more susceptible to your machinations and agenda.

The difficulty is that if you are “on the make” you assume that everyone else is “on the make” too and you might assume that offers some leverage. Your haggling instincts will imagine some kind of haggling contest concerning who makes the most out of whatever deal…

You may be fighting an entirely different battle and be completely oblivious. Caught up in arguing the toss you may not note when the other person has left the ring and walked away…

Sometimes, maybe decades later, you may note that you never saw that person ever again. You may rue having lost the chance to completely win the argument which was only in your mind in the first place. The points which you sought to score in the final analysis have no meaning or worth. Your marvellous victory was Pyrrhic.

For example in subject specific academia it never occurs that you will never see a person again…they will not fall off the edge of the world into the abyss… It is not factored in because the notion does not occur…

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I moved continents two times before I was ten. Bristol – Mt Isa – Kabwe. I spoke Bristle, Strine and Afrikaans scented English in the space of five years. For me to never see someone again is entirely normal and a part of my upbringing.

I learned something about impermanence at an early age…