36: 25-36

25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling …”
Not for a blog.

26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share …”
My debts.

27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
What I hold to be important.

28. Tell your partner [I think they mean 'companion'] what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.
Not for a blog.

29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
Only one? The time I reversed a fire truck into the car of one of my OIC’s friends. He parked right in behind me. But I should have checked.

30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
In front of another: can’t recall. By myself: recently with my son in hospital. At work I feel emotion from time to time when I read some harrowing case notes of people to whom we provide services, particularly when it involves young people with degenerative illness.

31. Tell your partner [companion -- if they are your 'partner', then you should have traveled far together and know much that you like about them, else they wouldn't be a 'partner'] something that you like about them already.
Not for blog.

32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
Children’s future.

33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
The trajectory of my life changed after two successive romantic shocks, oh so long ago; neither of which anything in my experience had prepared me for. The first only became bad after the second; the second amplifying it retrospectively.

In the second, I think I was more heavily invested than my girl-friend was, yet I read her behaviour as she being equally if not more invested then I was. When it ended nothing seemed to close the chasm of loss; the only way I could make sense of it was to jettison the way of life that had exposed me to such pain, in the hope that different experience would protect me in the future.

I suppose I’d have liked to have been able to communicate that; but the loss was total, and I was insufficiently experienced to bring a different outcome.

I lost touch with her many years ago and wish it to remain that way.

34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
My writings, because they are important to me. BTW, I wouldn’t bust a gut to save a pet.

35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
Brother’s: last link with my childhood; children's, because they're precious to me.

36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
Not for blog.
But, let's pretend that I'm single and talking to another: its not a problem, but a puzzle: has my life been significant?

It's easy to think that it hasn't been because I'm not 'famous' (see answer to Q2), not even in a limited way; I don't even have many connections on LinkedIn! I don't have a huge nest of friends. But when I meet people, I talk to them easily, and often see a glimmer of the real them. That's good.
But there's more: a Christian doesn't limit themselves to the horizon of this life, in two ways: firstly, we are in the kingdom of God...forever in intimate fellowship with our creator, saviour and, as they said in the old days 'lover of my soul'; secondly, in this life we have unimpeded access to our creator in prayer. There is nothing better!