Let It Breathe

Over the past week the subject of friendship has come up over and over again. Not believing in coincidences, I've taken this as something I'm supposed to look into and examine.

Last night as I sat listening to the music of Simon and Garfunkel, Gordon Lightfoot, Peter, Paul and Mary, and other folk artists of the 60s, I enjoyed watching my memories of those years pass across my mind. That's when it occurred to me that this month marks the 40th anniversary of my and Deni's friendship. Forty years. Incredible. How does a friendship that started when we were only sixteen last that long? I think of everything we've been through, both individually and together, and it blows my mind. I think, as I commented on someone's blog the other day, that it comes down to letting it breathe. Many years ago Donovan recited the following poem:

When two lovers touch hands,
They touch the two of them touching hands,
They touch the one of them in the space between
As each the other's hands doth touch.

When two lovers kiss lips,
They kiss the two of them kissing lips,
They kiss the one of them in the space between
As each the other's lip doth kiss.

When two lovers hold each other,
They hold the two of them holding each other,
They hold the one of them in the space between
As each the other holds.

I've never been casual about friendship. In fact, I've always loved my friends more fiercely than I've befriended my lovers. Ville says, "I don't make friends, I fall in love" and that's true for me, too. (Our friendship is 21 years old now--old enough to drink!) Friendship is love, just as romance is love, except that friendship doesn't have all of the legal, social, and moral expectations and obligations attached to it. In some ways it's freer, with fewer strings attached. I'm not saying that one is better or higher than the other, I'm just saying that they're different, yet they're the same in that they go through very similar phases.

When I meet a new friend, I want to spend as much time as possible with them. We become inseparable. There's the "honeymoon" phase during which everything about them is delightful, funny, meaningful, and our conversations are punctuated with, "Me too!" and "I never thought anyone else felt that way!" Then a little time passes and you start to notice things that bug you. Reality steps in and you find ways that you are different. Sometimes there are disagreements and sometimes a falling-out can happen. And when you call it quits it's as painful as ending a romance. When one of my oldest friends and I broke up years ago, I dubbed it "Let it Be" because it was every bit as painful and bitter as what the Beatles went through (also, we were Beatle Peatles together since the age of twelve). It was a divorce and, because we'd been roommates for a few years, there was even community property. We never worked out our differences and over the years we grew so far apart in our interests and beliefs that there was no bridging the gap when she tried to woo me back a couple of years ago. We had nothing in common anymore.

But I think that if we allow the friendship to grow and evolve as if it were a separate entity--a child, if you like--then we will never lose that friendship. It has to breathe, and sometimes when it inhales, it pushes the two people apart. But then it exhales and we're brought back together. If we let it grow and venture outward, it will only be stronger when it returns to us. Of course, all I'm saying is that we need to allow our friends to be who and what they are. No strings, no conditions. Some friendships can be saved and some can't, though.

Kahlil Gibran said that we should have spaces in our togetherness. What breathes in there is the one "in the space between".

Happy 40th Deni. I cannot imagine my life without you in it and I can't imagine what I would have been had we never met.

You may read the story of our friendship here.