Tom and Sherry

What a Fool Believes

Still from Tom and Jerry (“Blue Cat Blues,” 1956). © Turner Entertainment Co. / Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

By Llerraj Esuod

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”— Richard Feynman

Patterns emerge when pursuit overtakes connection, sometimes with the uncomfortable clarity of a mid‑century cartoon.

The image found me before the analysis did.

In 1956, Tom and Jerry aired an episode titled “Blue Cat Blues,” in which Tom becomes captivated by a diamond-shaped silhouette of a woman who communicates more through posture and tone than through words.

Let’s call her Sherry.

At first, Tom is enchanted. She is measured and strategic. She does not overexplain or overpromise. Her indifference is subtle, never cruel. Yet she occupies space in his mind with deliberate poise. In her presence, he gives without hesitation. His desire feels steady.

Tom is a natural giver. He offers to whom he chooses and willingly extends to Sherry what his heart can afford. Beyond generosity, he studies her rhythm and gauges her response. He tells himself steadiness matters, substance outlasts spectacle, and constancy clarifies what impulse will not define.

The months accumulate.

Sherry allows him to orbit. She accepts what he provides without signaling direction. She never asked him to stay. That was the point.

The imbalance forms. He senses the distance that persistence does not close, yet continues to believe that time and resolve will confirm his place. This is when exertion begins to substitute for shared intention.

Patience hardens into postponement. Investment continues beyond resolution. Access is granted without definition. Motion exists only because one person sustains it. This is not animation; it is familiarity.

Many men are conditioned to interpret endurance as virtue and distance as something to conquer rather than a sign to move around and move on.

Philosophers have long warned that desire untethered from reason disturbs internal order.

Tom, like many men and like myself, allowed hope to pulse where evidence offered none.

Hope extended the timeline reason would have shortened. I surrendered years to ambiguity, misreading proximity as progress and mistaking access for arrival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW9Cu6GYqxo

There comes a point when one realizes that some things are not meant to be altered. At that threshold, Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” becomes less a heartbreak anthem and more an acknowledgment of reality. It holds the truth without protest. You cannot negotiate affection into existence. Connection cannot be coerced. Acceptance is not defeat but discernment.

A circumcision of the heart leaves a scar without bitterness. As written in Isaiah 35:5, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.”

Once transformation occurs, waiting becomes irrelevant, and the conclusion requires no interpretation.

In the clip, Tom’s despair is theatrical. Mine never was. I did not collapse or sign over limbs and life as collateral. I stayed suspended too long, loyal to a vow that existed only within me. Devotion is honorable. Overextension is not.

I press forward, determined not to let years drift past in pursuit of someone who has not chosen me. I do not need what does not choose me.

My attachment was mine alone. It was real. Consistency does not manufacture commitment. Generosity without reciprocity is nothing. Intimacy requires intention from both sides. It cannot survive as a unilateral investment propped up by indefinite possibility.

Unlike Tom’s departure, this one carries no resentment. I leave informed. My value was never in question; only my discernment lagged behind hope.

This was a man-in-the-mirror moment. Enough is enough. Full function over dysfunction. Mutuality over endurance.

No man diminishes by trying, only by refusing to recalibrate.

I recalibrated.

Access is not arrival.

Learn it once.

A standard lived by, not a chapter survived.