People are like that. If every character trait is a scale, and each trait differs in intensity, the luminosity of a person would vary from person to person. Thus an old clich� is reiterated. A man is the sum of his parts. Each man learns a different lesson from the same incident. Each man is born different. A character flaw in one man may be a man�s saving grace in another.

Hence, with each scale individually ridged, shaped and polished differently, the person in question can also be seen differently by various people. After all, a man with a different sheen would discover a new variance in a particular person from another. It is an optical illusion after all, dependent on what the eyes construe as it gazes by the light of one�s individuality as it is refracted by the personality within the object of the gaze.

BF dislikes me criticising Paladin. He points out that he shares some undesirable traits with the Paladin, mainly on the issue of gender differences and expectations. I tell him he is poles apart in the same personality zone as compared to Paladin. Why? Because that particular scale may have started out the same but has rendered different by the tumble bottle of upbringing and the other miscellaneous tumble bottles where it has been smoothed and polished. Besides, even if that scale is exactly ridged the same, the BF is made of the numerous diverse other scales, where taken as a whole and refracted, creates a lustrous colour that is most pleasant to my prejudiced eye.

I do not profess to know every individual scale on my BF nor the colours he produces from those scales. His portrait is not complete. But insofar I have painted his portrait in my mind�s eye, he is turning out beautifully. The beauty lies in discovering the entirety of his portrait. The little cracks in the paint, the garishness of some colours clashing with others. As in art, each portrait will have its fair shares of detractors and lovers. Each artist renders each subject differently in a portrait. I will never discover all that is to know about the BF, never able to look beneath all that paint to know the canvas down to its last thread, but I will have his full portrait in my memories, come what may. And I will take pride in the fact that I have seen a different shade of my BF from everyone else. And that he finds me an attractive portrait as well.