Taking Your Road
Monday, May 10, 2010 at 2:37PM | by Otter I just exchanged emails with two friends: one tells me I’ve moved on from where we were when we were close friends, the other says she’s moved on from where she was when we were close friends. She sends “Best wishes for your future endeavors,” which I point out isn’t the kind of thing humans say to one another. Managers say that when they’re downsizing us.
Photo Copyright The Otter
It’s alright: she can laugh. She can take it and dish it out.
And all that, and mom’s cancer, and saying goodbye to a career, to love, to friends, tempts me to a sadness that is not really unmixed.
We grow. We change. We face deaths and leavings of many kinds.
I used to think that it was a flaw in the character to lose friends. To be honest, that terrified me: to feel so much affection and to be so close but then to find in a matter of days, everything had changed, the planets were spinning out of their orbits around me.
Lately (hopefully not too late) I’ve come to think of this as part of a spiritual journey, whether you believe in “spirit” or not. (I define spirit like Kierkegaard: he called it the relation that relates itself to itself, which was very coy of him, but very correct.)
It’s just a choice, really. “This friend no longer feeds me. This idea no longer sustains me.” It’s unsentimental simply to walk away. But some of us need to keep the journey light. And while I don’t like to lose my friends, at least not the ones I’ve been very close to, there comes a time when you have to embrace them and let them go their own way.
It’s hard: letting go feels wrong, as though love should be strong and tight and eternal. But one of the purposes of this blog, in fact all of my writing on the web, has been to get people out from under the shadow of the should. Religion is wonderful at creating communities, but unless it’s done very delicately it’s at the expense of growth. ”Thus far may you grow, and no more. Any idea you may engage in, but not the one at the center of the garden, the fundamental that holds the thing together.”
And it’s not right.
Truth must be true, and it must stand up to the nibbling at the center of the garden. We all nibble at different paces, and find our true selves, and our experience of god, as best we can. Some taste, and their eyes are opened, and they wander thoughtfully away down their road. I hope that knowledge and truth brings them happiness, though I expect that the writer of Ecclesiastes pegs it when he says that knowledge is a weariness and a great misery.
Truth is like that. It comes bringing a sword.
So off you go, friends. Off I go. I hope we can journey again together, but if not, I believe in you and in your love, and I hope you don’t think me too very foolish. But if you do, well, I’m good with it.
We are trying to paint the shape of air before our time comes, and we find that all goodbyes will be lasting.
Otter
I’ve revisited this post lately. Somebody very dear to me has left my life, swinging a hammer in the china-shop of my heart, and slamming the door without explanation.
It angers me. I think it shows terrible unkindness and disrespect. If you have to go, go. But go in love, not like a burglar making off with the goods.
And try to remember, people live around here.
Change, Death, Friendship, Growth, Kierkegaard, undefined in Relationships 
Reader Comments (3)
First Dylan Thomas and now this? I feel like a blubbering, sentimental fool.
I struggle with moving out from under the "shoulds" in life....
She sends "Best wishes for your future endeavors," which I point out isn't the kind of thing humans say to one another.
I was quite taken aback at the starkness of this statement. This is something I've said to quite a few friends in my life, intending the utmost sincerity and benevolence. You can imagine my shock when, after considering your perspective, I realized the truth in it all.
My friends, former and present, are all precious to me-- it is time I find new ways to express this.
Thank you for giving direction to my self-discovery.