The Everyday Human

September: On Friendship and Connection

September 6

Companionship, where it is most profound and in its most natural state, is in the silence. The quiet moments—sitting together in a car on a long drive, sitting at the table over a meal or cup of coffee, walking a path in the woods or walking the block—without ever the need to speak or fill the air for fear of silence.

In its most natural state, friendship is presence. It knows that words and touch and busying ourselves with activities, while all nice, are not necessary. 

Do not feel the need or pressure to talk and push out the quiet. 

Be present with another. Let the silence out. Just be, and feel it warm you.

• Reflection title: Sit With the Silence
• Creative inspiration: Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat"
• Reflection question: Who can I sit with in silence, and when did we last? Do I feel uncomfortable in silence with another? If so, why might that be?

September: On Friendship and Connection

September 5

Maybe it’s that your memory has altered and obscured the events of your past, trimmed the edges or punched holes through the middles to fit the shape of the puzzle you’re placing them into. That’s likely it. 

Not a bad thing. We all do it. It’s how we grow and get by. But what if someone saw the real truth of you? Saw through those lies you tell yourself that are really truths, but only to you? And what if they loved you for all of those truths and half truths and lies nonetheless? Could you drop it all, shedding it from your shoulders like a cloak and sit naked and vulnerable before them while they painted you—the real you?

Who would that person be?

What would that painting look like?

• Reflection title: The Way You Really Are
• Creative inspiration: Xenogears
• Reflection question: Who could paint me the way I really am? What would that painting look like? Do I even know what the real me looks like?

September: On Friendship and Connection

September 4

I’ve learned to not only accept that friendships ending is a part of life, but also to love it. Amor fati, am I right? We’re all waves in the big ocean of humanity. Some of us cross paths for a brief time, and for whatever reason, we continue on our separate ways, carried by the currents. And some of those waves collide, making a single larger wave that stays together for longer periods of time—sometimes until death. 

No matter how long or short they last, friendships change you. Each in some way has contributed or still does contribute to the person you are right now in this very moment. So even if it has ended, enjoy the fact that it existed. Take the happy and sad moments with you. Friendships, the long and short of them, are never for nothing. They’re just a natural and beautiful part of what it means to be human.

• Reflection title: You Can Go Your Own Way
• Creative inspiration: blink-182, "Lemmings"
• Reflection question: What friendships have ended in my life? What have I learned from their forming and ending? How have they changed me?

September: On Friendship and Connection

September 3

While it’s an interesting exercise to reflect on the precise moment a friendship forms and why it forms—those commonalities or shared events—I don’t think that’s very important at all in the scheme of things. I think what’s more important is the fact that they ever formed in the first place . . . and that they lasted . . . or maybe even didn’t last.

Friends come and go. There’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t have enough time or energy to remain close with every friend you've ever had. But count yourself fortunate for having those you do have while you have them . . . and for those you did have while you had them.

And certainly be grateful for the friends who are with you for the long haul.

• Reflection title: “Why” Is Less Important Than “It Did”
• Creative inspiration: Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
• Reflection question: What is the status of my friendships currently? Who is my best friend, and when did that journey of friendship begin? Can I pinpoint the exact moment? Does it even matter?

September: On Friendship and Connection

September 2

The princess takes the seraph’s hand and without speaking, they sit in the field. The goldenrod and asters and wild carrot bloom and die around them and then bloom and die again and so do these travelers in the field, because things like Life and Death have no place here—Time sees to that. Because what else might they be up to existing and not existing within that ramshackle hut of theirs and pruning away in their garden of strange fruit? 

The angel and princess shift from sitting to lying down and the young grass is their bed for the time being. They look up and close their eyes. The wind. The waves. The rustling of greens and yellows and pinks. The memories of their old lives have melted away long before they arrived. Right and wrong, past and present, and future and language make no sense here. 

They don’t have to when the princess and the seraph are together.

• Reflection title: The Princess and the Seraph
• Creative inspiration: Jelaluddin Rumi, “A Great Wagon”
• Reflection question: Is there one in my life with whom I can lie in a field and just be? Or, what are my thoughts about these dualities the world is so full of talking about?

September: On Friendship and Connection

September 1

It is beautiful, yes, but remember—and I must remind myself of this very often—friendship and companionship are indeed like plants that need nurturing. They are not the hearty wild onion or thistle that can spring up and stand strong in both deluge and drought. These relationships need checking in on, good soil, sunlight, pruning. As I’m sure you know, they will die without them. 

So find those relationships in which you will and want to form excessively strong attachments and roots. Do not love those people by halves. And watch the fruit ripen and eat of its sweetness.

• Reflection title: A Strange and Beautiful Fruit
• Creative inspiration: Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• Reflection question: Who are those in my life I am not loving by halves, but by whole? Am I in need of further friendship or is my cup sufficiently full?

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 31

We are a part of these wild and beautiful things contained on Earth. We are fortunate to have developed consciousness and to be able to recognize the life and wonder around us. We are privileged to breathe this air and cultivate this land and to work with the animals and each other to survive. And we have the privilege of looking up at the stars, those beautiful blinking things that, if you’re lucky, come out at night where you are and shake you to the core just upon opening your eyes, going outside, and looking up.

How fortunate you are to be where you are, to be who you are, and to live with all of the creatures of Earth and to be able to gaze up with them at the forget-me-nots of the angels, sprawled across the infinite meadows of heaven.

• Reflection title: A Strange, Alien, and Beautiful World
• Creative inspiration: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie"
• Reflection question: When have I last counted myself fortunate to be alive and to look up at the stars? When did I last take a breath and just . . . look up at night or before the sun has risen?

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 30

It might sound like nothing, but there in that moment, under the blue sky, warm in the sun, the sound of water from the creek not far off, and the scent of that beautiful plant . . . it was everything. If only for a moment. And following that moment, I couldn’t help but feel I just experienced awe. Wonder at being present at the exact time and place where everything from the sun to the plant to the wind to the creek had to happen just so, and how fortunate I was to witness it all and be a part of it all.

I thought this would be nice to reflect on for the book, then I also thought, is there a poem about the scent of basil reaching you under a blue sky in late summer as you prepare to water the plants? I didn’t even bother searching, I just wrote my own. And I’d encourage you to do the same the next time you experience awe.

• Reflection title: All at Once
• Creative inspiration: Eastin DeVerna, The Everyday Human
• Reflection question: When did I last experience awe? The poem I’ll write about it is . . .

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 29

We’re humans, not gods! We aren’t meant to be all-knowing. Part of the fun of life is not knowing and then learning and discovering. What is more thrilling than trying so damn hard to learn something, whether from a book or in physical practice, and then failing over and over and over again until one day, it finally clicks. And you can say, Eureka! I’ve got it! I learned the sonnuvabitch! It’s a beautiful feeling, and an addictive one at that. 

So, yes, we know some things, but really, we know nothing, and that’s a beautiful thing as long we never stop striving to know more.

• Reflection title: I Know That I Know Nothing
• Creative inspiration: Plato, The Apology of Socrates
• Reflection question: Have I yet admitted to myself that I know that I know nothing? What would I like to know next?
  
  

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 28

Moments of wonder and awe bring us into a sort of perfect stillness (at least internally). They force us into the present moment, however long it may last, and they help us concentrate on living, ironically, perhaps, by forcing us to focus on something that usually transcends life. Wonder and awe steal you away from hopes or fears, anxiety or contentedness, happiness or anger. They strip you of your worldly worries and wash you of the mud of existence, leaving your soul bare and exposed to the universe which birthed you.

Yes, for now, at least, I believe that experiencing wonder and awe is to truly live and be pushed into the present—and to be at peace with the spirit within you.

(And don’t forget to regularly change your smoke detector batteries!)

• Reflection title: Pushed Into the Present
• Creative inspiration:  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
• Reflection question: When was the last time I felt at peace with the spirit within me? When was I truly living in the present moment, so much so that I wasn’t even aware of it?