Forever Friends

Forever friends can be taken for granted. A friend climbed Kilimanjaro; I did not write. Another got a stent in his heart; I did not know. Yet another just wrote he has been given a year to live. We live without a sense of attachment, if attachment be understood as dependence, conditional, expected. There is a certain security in knowing some such friends. They will contact you even after several years absence, and we pick up intense feelings right off the bat. No letters. No news. No phoning. It makes no-never-mind.

Facebook gives one very many friends. Some of the people on my roster I do not quite recall, until I see the photo. Some befriended me and have never commented on my postings. Nor have I remarked on theirs. Some I do not know. Strangers, they say, are friends one hasn't yet met. And we all have inner and outer circles of friendship. One of my friends, a global traveller, contacts me almost daily, sometimes several times in succession from far-flung places, whereas another scarcely writes at all. It is the friend about whom I have no sense of insecurity that I feel most comfortable with, for although we do not communicate, I am sure that there is no misunderstanding between us. We care, though seeming estranged. Some text jokes, but it does not readily translate, especially if unsure of being unconditionally approved of. I have a friend who shudders at sentences that end with a preposition; something up with which he will not put. Ha! Unconditional acceptance appears to be a rare thing.

That marvelous passage of worldly wisdom that so easily gets incorporated into weddings, that so easily reads trippingly off the tongue, that indeed would cement the world in a Lennon-like sense of love, is so very hard to abide by. Corinthians 13 says nothing of religion or belief or rules and expectations. Rather, the passage simply says it like it is: Love is accepting, not judgmental. It expects nothing, asks nothing, demands nothing. Love is about giving. Love is about taking an interest. Love is about allowing the other to be. Love is about being a friend rather than expecting to be befriended. Love cares. It... It is not exactly how the passage goes? Well, does it matter? Is it necessary to correct the particulars? Are we not able just to love? The 'agape' kind of love, naturally. The other kind of love, most of us have realized, is far too dependent on pheromones, ha!

Friends of mine stay in 'the inner circle' because we both take time to connect on a multiple of levels. Those friends who are too estranged from me due to their not accepting my universal integration, my distinct verbosity(ha!), my surreal apprehensions of life, my metaphorical allusions and my pedantic parables of intentionality (like this missive!) tend to stay on the outskirts. My affection for them is real. My love for them is complete. Even my liking of them, naturally, is based on a reciprocation of mutuality that is independent of age or sex or proximity. So too for most of us, I guess, though we may not choose to articulate our differentials in quite the same phraseology. Friends forgive. Forever friend's are rare. At issue is the proximity not of geographical location, nor of contact, but of trust. Complete acceptance. I won't say anything intentionally to hurt you. How can I believe you love me if i perceive you to distrust me, or worse, intentionally to hurt me? But just to be loving anyway; what a friend! Ha! Would that a family be so too!