You mightn't know it necessarily. If you log onto my Facebook profile, you'll see I have 1080 'friends'. One might jump to the conclusion that a girl with so many 'friends' is unlikely to place much value on friendship. You may assume that friendship is something I toss off like a spare coin, carelessly, to anyone shooting off a request.
Quite the contrary.. though I DO sincerely value each of those 1080 connections for their myriad possibilities and the big and small ways that they enrich my life, friendship, real friendship, to me, is rare and precious and sacred.. If you don't really know much ABOUT me then it's unlikely you really KNOW how true that is OF me.
I believe friendship manifests in a variety of ways. Each starts with a seed. Much the way a plant differs from a tree, each grows at its own unique pace, one taking many, many years to develop and unfurl and another sprouting up with the passion and exuberance of a zealous weed. Neither is more or less a friendship. None is necessarily more or less valuable, more or less revered. Each has its perfect qualities and characteristics making it like no other that has come before or will ever come again.
Frienship is chemistry.
Friendship is magic.
Friendship is a subtle, nearly inexplicable DNA-level response.
Friendship is a deep and spiritual connection with another, an exchange of energy, an opportunity to learn and grow and support. In encountering friendship in another we are magnetized by the qualities that we have yet to fully realize within ourselves or that we have disowned and must learn to reintegrate, though we may have no awareness of the unawakened need. A friend provides support, sometimes in very quiet and subtle ways, other times with much more of a sledgehammer-over-the-head, tough-love approach, in precisely the places we need it until we learn and shift and expand and awaken, later requiring different support in a different way or having it to offer in return. It is infinitely reciprocal. It is eternally giving and receiving.
When I make the choice to give of myself in friendship, sacred friendship from where it originates in the deepest recesses of my heart, it is with the utmost reverence and in the truest, simplest and most pristine form of love.
Once I have granted you access to that place in my heart, you will forevermore find a home there. I will carry you with me always. You will have come into my life and I will have allowed you in. You will have touched my soul and changed me. Forever.
