When I am encounter something beautiful, my heart reaches for a friend. The joy that I experience demands that I share it with another. Thus, the thought of my friend begins the very moment that my soul is struck with the sense of beauty. In order to experience the fullness of the encounter it must to be shared with a friend.
I began to notice this phenomenon several years ago. Every moment of life is enlarged by friends. Friends are those people with whom we desire to share those defining moments in life. Moments of beauty and moments of suffering are all experienced or endured with the aid of friends. They are the ones we reach for when we are struggling the most or when we are being amazed. Life can only be truly realized as it is shared with others.
Most of us have friendships, yet we also tend to take the phenomenon of friendship for granted. We commonly enjoy them without reflecting much on them. Yet when there is a separation we feel the absence quite strongly. When a friendship dissolves we feel the pain deeply. Friends are the most valuable resource in having and enjoying life to the fullest. Yet, there is very little written about friendship.
A friend is one with whom the reality of shared experience becomes ongoing and continuous. He is one to whom we turn naturally and unselfconsciously when we are struck by the most meaningful moments of life. A friend is one we share heightened experiences of perception, insight, and feelings; but also the mundane details of our days.
The qualities of our individual experience are expanded, enhanced, enriched and recast in the context of our conversation with him. The enjoyment of each other’s company become personal tradition, and trust fully flowers in the embrace of the relationship. Opening our selves to one another, we come to share a common realm that is unique to us and greater than the sum of our individualities.
These observations have come over a lifetime of friendship. Casual, lost, and deep friends have revealed most of what I know about myself and life. These friendships have molded and shaped; enlarged and enhanced and empowered every season of my life.
Life is lived in the “air” of friendship. Friendship is the breath of life.
