What’s Your Definition of a Friend?

Joshua Clay @ Unsplash

As you entered my childhood home, you would find plaques decorating the walls, filled with poetry, some platitudes, some bible quotes and some thoughtful prose. Some of those plaques came to mean something to me, and I would find myself reading them over and over again. Never tiring of their wisdom, the beauty of their words. These were words that I kept so close to my heart, I hold them still… some 40 years later…

These are the words that guide me, ride me, right me. They remind me of who I want to be, how I want to be treated, and how I want to treat the people in my life.

Things like..:

If I could save some part of you
it would be this day
this hour would do…
Your eyes alight with such surprise
to see how spring can change the sky
and touch the trees
and find the flowers

If I could save this day
it would be you that I’d remember
Every spring
when snow is left in patches
on the ground
and flowers like the ones you found
are reaching for the sun

I would remember part of you this way
Spring is to being.

-Eleanore Lewis

Now… I don’t know who Eleanore is? (Google was absolutely NO help!) But, her words resonated with me so deeply that I have never forgotten them. Because that, to me? is the definition of a true “love”.

Whatever the type of love you’re talking about… it’s irrelevant. Taking a moment out of time… of your eternity… and holding it precious, because it was spent with another..?

That..? That is love. Period. End of sentence.

There was another plaque, which the memory of it, hanging on the wall seen through the glass of the door as you first entered the house, started me on this particular tirade.

You see, someone near and very dear to me asked me why I let him go on about his troubles and not just tell him to “shut up”.

That makes me smile… I could never ask him to do such thing! And I hope that he now understands that it is no burden for me to listen to his troubles as well as his silliness, just as I hope it is no burden for him to listen to me ramble on at times about the insanity that is sometimes my life.

Why…?

Because he’s my friend. First and foremost: He’s my friend. And this particular bit of prose has guided me most of my life in what that word really means. Etched into a piece of plywood, it served as a reminder for me about how you should feel in any relationship. I saw it every single day from the time I was nine years old, until the day I moved out sixteen years later. I know it has been widely distributed, and many of you may already be familiar with it, but, I think it’s a message that bears repeating.

What is a friend? I will tell you.

It is a person with whom you dare to be yourself. Your soul can be naked with them. They seem to ask of you to put on nothing, only to be what you are. They do not want you to be better or worse. When you are with them, you feel as a prisoner feels who has been declared innocent. You do not have to be on your guard. You can say what you think, so long as it is genuinely you.

They understand those contradictions in your nature that lead others to misjudge you. With them? You breathe freely. You can avow your little vanities and envies and hates and vicious sparks… your meannesses and absurdities, and, in opening them up to them?

They are lost. Dissolved on the white ocean of their loyalty. They understand.
You do not have to be careful. You can abuse them, neglect them, tolerate them.
Best of all? You can keep still with them.
It makes no matter.
This person likes you.
They are like fire that purges to the bone.
They understand.
They understand.
You can weep with them, sin with them, laugh with them, pray with them.
Through it all — and underneath — they see, know and love you.

A friend?
What is a friend?

Just one, I repeat, with whom you dare to be yourself.

-C. Raymond Beran

So, ramble on my friend… I’m happy to listen. Anytime. ❤