What Is A Friend?

Since the formation of Friend Ship Services many years ago, there have been many definitions of what the word friend means to the various people who have participated in our personal retreat programming.  The definition I have used for myself over the decades is one written by C. Raymond Beran.

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 him.

He seems to ask of you to put on nothing, only to be what you are.

He does not want you to be better or worse.

When you are with him, 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, as long as it is genuinely you.

He understands those contradictions in your nature that lead others to misjudge you.

With him 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 him, they are lost, dissolved on the white oceans of his loyalty.

He understands.

You do not have to be careful.

You can neglect him, tolerate him.

Best of all, you can keep still with him.

It makes no matter.  He likes you.

He is like fire that purges to the bone.

He understands.

You can weep with him, sin with him, laugh with him.

Through it all – and underneath – he sees, knows and loves you.

A friend?  What is a friend?

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

A concept that is easy to say.  A concept that is difficult to implement and make part of our everyday lives.

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Internal Goodbyes

When I ask someone how they handle the goodbyes in their lives, the response is almost always about the separation/departure between themselves and others. 

These goodbyes are very important to our emotional health and our socialization with other people as discussed in an earlier blog.  Usually there is some type of psychic pain and sense of loss.  We know that that these external goodbyes are part of our life pattern, but experience and practice seldom makes them any easier to manage.

Frequently overlooked are the internal goodbyes that we all experience in our life journeys.  First, there is the transition from being a baby to being a child.  Our world changes as we move from the absolute dependence of being a baby into childhood where there is still heavy dependence on others, but the slow process of growing into an independent individual truly begins.

Saying goodbye to being a baby and growing into a child where we learn to walk and talk can be difficult for some children more than others as evidenced by ‘the terrible twos’.  There are almost no expectations of a baby; the adult world is ready 24/7 to meet one’s needs.  With the arrival of talking and walking, we say goodbye to babyhood and adults develop expectations that we will behave in a certain manner.

In a way, each birthday is an internal marker that we are saying goodbye to one chapter in our lives and entering a new one.  This process can begin on the first birthday and continues throughout our lives until the last one we celebrate.

Some internal goodbyes are marked by our society as being more special than others.   When we leave the age of 12 and become an adolescent, we say goodbye internally to childhood and move on to the expectations of being a teenager.   There are even sub-chapters within some groups like adolescence when we say goodbye to 15 and become ‘sweet 16’ or when we move into some of the expectations of adulthood at ages 18 and 21.

This process continues throughout out lives with special celebrations for ages such as 40, 50, 65, etc.  At each birthday we say goodbye to our previous life chapters and move on until we reach the final goodbye of death.

While many internal goodbyes can be marked by age, there are others that are unique and usually are not necessarily age related. 

For example, when we leave our “first love”, this is an internal goodbye that will leave its mark on us forever.  The same is true when we say goodbye to a belief of our immortality and accept that life does have limits and all of us really do eventually die.

Our lives are full of many other internal goodbyes such as leaving our first job/career, burying our parents, changing some of the foundational beliefs that we held when we were younger, accepting that our youth has departed, saying farewell to the energy and good health of younger days, divorce, accepting that our children are now adults and we may now be the dependent ones, etc.

Many external goodbyes are visible to others, while only we can see and feel many of the internal ones.  While our lives are full of being able to say ‘hello’ to new people and life phases, it remains essential that we develop healthy ways to say external and internal goodbyes when they occur and be able to really let go of that person or situation.

Comments welcome.     Email:  silverchatline@gmail.com