High-wire Acrobatics

Life is always filled with delicious ironies. I call them delicious as if you are like me, you find one reason in the crazy moment to pause and think – “this is so funny, that I have to laugh, even if the world around me seems spinning into imperfections!” I do this because maybe I secretly hope that this one joyful hilarious moment will steadily grow and overcome those dark moments so much so that they will not have power over me and I can then go back to doing what I need to do to find myself in my work, in relationships and in my life.

I think nowhere are these contradictions of life and love more evident than in relationships of every kind. It is in a word… so tenuous. You renegotiate your friendship with someone you like every day of your life. Looking at life from the view that I had, I used to think I was way passed making new friends and trying to add value in the lives of people around me. My primary identity was defined by my responsibilities – father, brother, provider, social worker, conscientious citizen…loyal friend?!?! Four years ago and counting, I had to relearn all those values needed in developing friendships that I had become numbed to all the years before. I have good days when I feel like I am no less noble than a knight and there are some days when I feel like a complete idiot! But I am slowly realizing that true friendship is most unselfish and that affection is the most humble form of love.

I guess I am slowly recognizing that love is the best when it is free and when it nurtures trust in the other person. This trust that I speak of is more than just fidelity. It is the trust that the other person feels accepted to be her true self in every situation and without having to fear that she will be less appreciated for being true. This obviously calls for acceptance on my part – again sometimes which makes me feel like I am in a dank pot-hole and at other moments on a cushion of air – part fool/wise-man/ court-jester and prophet. As if by trusting the goodness in the other person I could ride out my own fears of being accepted and trusted for who I am when I am with my friend.

This is a maze that has no single pathway. Just as it is complicated to be human, relationships are complicated too! Sometimes you feel that one door opens and then you just move to the next one and even better still, several corridors and hundreds of doors later, you come back to the exact same place where you started! Stumped and feeling quite befuddled! But if life is the soil made fertile by affection and communication; hope are the roots; and trust is the air and space to make it breathe; then friendship is a deeply rooted tree that nurtures our lives and gives you and me life-spaces of light that will help both of us to grow.

Writing about all of this makes me feel I am no less an acrobat in relationships that are important to me. I walk the line like a bird-on-a-wire and if I have to fly; I just know there are days when I will hit the ground but it only means that I have good reason to get up again. But to do that well, my heart does not need a door nor a high wall around it. I will, instead learn to trust myself and my friend and so what if along the way one of us is broken; the rest of the best of me is there to fix what has become unglued.