Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes,
but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has
repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in
ourselves to forgive them in turn. A friend knows our difficulties
and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our
vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the
strange illusion we do not need them. An undercurrent of real
friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is
rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy.
All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual
forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die.
The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a
constant force in human life: a diminishing circle of friends is the
first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble: of overwork, of too
much emphasis on a professional identity, of forgetting who will be
there when our armored personalities run into the inevitable
natural disasters and vulnerabilities found in even the most
average existence.
But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or
sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate
touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other
nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of
having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being
granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with
them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have
accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey
impossible to accomplish alone.
David Whyte
art : somewhere between the sea and the sky - MidTideDesign
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