On Relationships: The Essence of Love
This morning, over coffee, I came across an article, in Sunday’s the New York Times which resonated with me.
If you are on Facebook, you have experienced the innumerable cross-species relationships between animals: kittens and puppies, dogs and cats, elephants and ducks, whatever seemingly bizarre combo you can conjure. We were told when we were kids that love could never happen between differences, that fighting like “cats and dogs” would be a given between those two groups. Little did we know that animals can transcend those “givens,” and that the most incredible relationships can occur when there is an opportunity; that “sameness” does not matter, and that differences can make a relationship all the more interesting. It just takes is the ability to see past the exterior, the looks, the nationality, the age.
My dearest friend was almost old enough to be my grandmother. I had no elderly relatives to stand beside, to learn from, to laugh with, to love. My friend was an immigrant; she escaped from religious persecution and landed here and created a life, a family, a career with honors. She was my mentor. She taught me many lessons, skills, bolstered my strength, educated me.
People create their own families to fill needs and we each became part of one another’s lives. I miss her daily but I learned to be open to the possibility of friendship with people who were younger and older than myself. I learned to see beyond the skin and engage in the mutual learning that takes place between the souls whose bodies are merely rented.
This article is the tale of x-ray vision; when we put looks, age, country-of-origin, wrinkles, shticks, behaviors, such that all that appears on the outside becomes a thin, paper wrapper for what is beneath, love may prevail.
Read this.
Friendship definitely can occur between the most unlikely of people. I think people can get into way of thinking that friends must be relatively the same age, the same generation. So you have many missed opportunities of connection, as the author of the article initially dismissed her eventual friend. Maybe there are assumptions that what would these two people even talk about or have in common? The sharing of wisdom and learning goes both ways, not just from the older to the younger. You just have to be be able to hear the “plink plink” of those little friendship stones being thrown at your window.
“You just have to be be able to hear the “plink plink” of those little friendship stones being thrown at your window.”
A most beautiful, meaningful sound. I have heard it many times; the simplest and most divine music.