The Beauty of Friendships

“Open your hands if you want to be held.”    Rumi

I recently had the great pleasure to share some in-person time with a friend. Sitting together in a restaurant after months of social distancing due to COVID-19 restrictions, was novel and much welcomed. For the next two hours we indulged in the joys of talking, listening, laughing, and pondering the mysteries and meaning of life. Standing to depart from our enjoyable rendezvous, I was full not only from the wonderful food but with contentment, one that was born from opening our hands to hold one another.  Embracing farewell, I scurried towards my car realizing that I hadn’t put enough money in the parking meter. I let out a sigh of relief when the expected ticket wasn’t on my windshield. For indeed time flew by without my notice or care until that moment.

In Rumi’s poetry the sun, sunlight or the dawn refers to friendship and love for one another. When you have a friend the world has more light in it. Friendships are a kind of blending of a single human’s experience into a greater expression, a synergistic creation of something new.

Dear friends, you help me to open my hand. Thank you. I have grown to have a deeper appreciation for time spent with friends and family which reminds me of a Tennessee Williams quote I wrote in my book, See You in the Sky: A Memoir of Prison Possibility and Peace…. “So Moments Pass as though they wished to stay. We have not long to love, a night a day.”