The Essence of FRIENDSHIP

A DEEP DIVE INTO WHAT MAKES THE BEST FRIENDSHIPS

- MARK NEPO

I spent many years trying so hard to be good that I wound up ignoring how to be authentic.

Eventually, the cost was that being good became a burden, which precluded my being authentic. Part of what kept this cycle going was how I worked especially hard at maintaining my illusion of relationships (what I wanted them to be like), regardless of what happened between me and those I loved.

I have come to understand that relationships, like everything else in life, have their natural cycles. If we don't evolve and grow, if we don't allow ourselves to change and stay true to those changes, we wind up expending our vitality trying to prop things up that are no longer vital. Not letting one way of being run its course can prevent the relationship from evolving to a deeper level. In essence, propping up a relationship is like misting a flower once its root is cut. It won't last very long.

Over many years, it became painfully clear that my insistence in denying that certain friendships had changed drained those relationships of whatever possibility they had. My denial became an insidious form of vampirism through which my stubborn image of certain relationships sucked the life out of me and them because I desperately wouldn't let the relationships change and grow.

There is a fine line between the persistence of friendship, regardless of what happens, and the entanglement of friendship by which we tighten our expectations of each other. Often, we start out being steadfast for all the right reasons and, one day, it all slips into a life-draining entanglement that we don't know how to get out of. Yet, it is the commitment to see each other completely that returns us to the Unity of Souls, while the entanglements we dare not speak of prevent us from finding and knowing that bond. Still, being human, there are many turns in the road that will lead us into life-draining entanglements.