Never Walked In High Heels

This past Easter, I started a tray of tomato seedings in my front room. The floor to ceiling windows in my flat make it possible to grow just about anything inside, as I discovered one year by growing six foot tall sunflowers in pots from just the sunlight in the window. Naturally, this means that for as long as I live here, I am compelled to discover what exactly can be grown inside my home.

Believe it or not, I am not really a plant lover, or at least I didn’t used to be. I would watch my grandfather grow tomatoes out of buckets in the Ozarks as I was growing up and roll my eyes with embarrassment. Couldn’t he at least put them in a pot? And why do they always look so scraggly? Can’t he do anything right? Why doesn’t he just buy tomatoes like a normal person?

There’s not really much that I’m willing to admit that I agree with my grandfather on. But because evidently I am part irish, and, as Margret Mitchell put it in Gone with the Wind, I have a “love of the land,” I need to grow things from seed.

It began two summers ago when a friend gave me the sunflower seeds for my birthday. Ever since then I’ve been a total goner for watching things grow. I come downstairs each morning looking for new growth on each of the plants. Waiting to see how fast they will grow, what makes them develop, who will produce the first crop, and what it will taste like. The optimist in me is already expecting a bumper crop of tomatoes this year, which will allow me to make a lovely tomato vinegar to give as Christmas presents this year. (I know nothing about tomato vinegar, but that’s the plan.)

I think its because deep down I’m obsessed with watching growth. All humans are probably. I don’t think it matters if it’s the growth of a mutual fund or a small child, watching something multiply, elaborate on itself organically, become more and more complex is like watching the most basic elements of life in action. Each of us are essentially doing the same thing over and over again, we just don’t notice it in ourselves, but the the second that growth stops, life ends and decay begins. To assume that we are done growing is to assume we are dead.

And so, each morning I start the day inspecting my plants and looking for life. Somedays the changes that come overnight seem non-existent, other days they jump out at me so clearly, I can see the new leaves before I come halfway down the steps. The rate of growth in a plant is reflective on a miniature scale of the rate of growth in a person. Each morning when we wake up, on a cellular, spiritual, and intellectual level, we are a different person than when went to bed eight hours before. Its easy to forget about this change in ourselves. You can ignore it a lot less when you’re confronted with a little tiny organism in which a new leaf alters its entire being.

This morning I transplanted twelve seedlings into paper cups. This is their last phase before they are headed to their permanent home. Six are for myself and six to pass on to friends so they can find the nourishment they need with people I love. My friends, the plants, and I will change throughout the summer until we produce the fruit we were meant to create, planting seeds in each other and going on in life, until its time to move one and grow elsewhere.

The warmth of Sunday morning rained down on those of us who lined the roadside. It was still so early that there remained the crisp in the air that creates morning dew. My friend perched herself on a three stump as we waited for the first rush of marathon athletes to go by. The London Marathon actually doubles back on itself by circling around my neighborhood, giving our community one of the best opportunities in town to see the event.
We were headed to watch early, planing to be long gone before the bulk of the runners came by. I had my eye on one pack of racers in particular, the wheelchair women’s division. My childhood friend and teammate, Barney, who had just taken forth the week before at the Boston Marathon, flew to London a few days ago to compete on the London course as well. We had met in the lobby of her hotel Friday afternoon so that I could interview her for a documentary I’m producing. She told me the approximate time she would be coming by during the race on Sunday. Until that point, I hadn’t seen Barney for over fourteen years.
Back then I was a Paralympic hopeful, having just broken several records for track and field in both the US and Canada. My day dreams consisted of gold medals and at night my coaches sent me to bed with either a discus, a shot put, or a basketball, depending on what time of year it was. Barney, who was about four years my senior, was always one division above mine, and was one of the few other girls who could hold her own with the boys. This naturally made her my very own personal idol.
And for years my love for sports was all consuming. Then as quickly and as passionately as the love began, it stopped. I was swept away to other activities, which eventually drew me into the arts, and pursuing my dreams here in London. These theatrical and literary aspirations were something which were always built inside of me, even during the long hours spent on the spongy track at the naval base where I practiced. It was just that back then my opportunity to pursue those dreams and the tools I could use were insufficient. And now they are not. When my life changed, when new opportunity was granted, Barney and I went in opposite directions. Which, half a lifetime later, put us on the same road in the middle of the same city, at the same point it time. Just for a second, our dreams touched, and bounced off each other, going back to our separate directions and giving us both more momentum in the process.
When I was still a teenager, still veraciously collecting medals and living off power bars washed down with gatorade, my father put a poster on my wall that read “celebrate the freedom to race towards your dreams.” It’s still a stretch for most people’s imagination to think of someone in a wheelchair traveling the world as a champion marathon athlete. In many ways its stranger still to think of someone like me in film or writing plays for London’s West End, and yet here we were. The love, the faith, the training we received where were younger gave us the freedom to race boldly towards are dreams, even in the early days when it seemed like our dreams were impossible, or we couldn’t figure out what we were born to do. Somehow we always knew we had the basic skills it took to work towards any dream when had. The details we would figure out along the way.
From over the horizon a van appeared that read “PACE CAR, WOMEN’S WHEELCHAIR DIVISION.” Unexpectedly a knot came up in my throat, the kind you get when you know you’re looking at life at its most foundational, when you can reach the very touchstone of life and know that its solid. For a split second she whizzed towards me, her carbon wheels thundering against the road beneath her. I shouted her name as she passed, and then she was gone up the road ahead of her. And I turned and went back to my street, ready for a day of racing towards dreams of my own.

My friend is getting nervous. He’s one of those popular Buddhists who try very hard to convince both himself and the rest of mankind that he is ‘at peace damn it.’ I don’t buy his act for a second under the most tranquil of situations, and I tell him this constantly. This, in turn infuriates him, proving my point even further. And on the one hand, it is quite good fun pulling my friend out of his zen-like state, but the fact he feels nervous right now makes this whole feeling of unease less of an event and more of the texture of a typical day with my friend Chicken Little.

“No, I really am legitimately concerned about this.” He’s talking to me over Skype and the level of panic in his eyes makes me half expect him to pick up his monitor and start shaking it, as if to emphasize that this is really, really worrying… Really. “I mean if so many cultures and so many religions think that something awful, something world changing is going to happen this year, 2012, well, they must be on to something.”

There you have it, my friend is worried about some science fiction movie turned to reality and in the process destroying all of mankind. And while it’s altogether possible that such a disaster might happen this year, or at any point in time really, I refuse to call anyone at eleven o’clock at night to discuss this immanent apocalypse. For one thing, I just don’t have the time. And there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.

So an event may happen in the next nine months that will change the course of human history. An event? As in just one? Really? Don’t we stand on the shoulders of the past, listening to gunshots heard around the world and using inventions which changed everything? Its as if all those wise mystics and prophets have forgotten the interconnectivity of us all, that every day things happen which change the direction of mankind as we know it. Each year there are cataclysmic disasters as well as epic moments of enlightenment which brightly throughout our world and history. To attempt to specify this year as unique is to cut this year off from the larger scope of history.

Let us assume that there is an event, unique to 2012 that will change everything. What if it doesn’t come so much with a bang but a whimper. One can argue, regardless of religious affiliation, that the event that event that had the greatest impact on human history was a guy named Jesus born 2,000 so odd years ago. Let us assume that this is the case as, at the very least, so many actions in history have taken place in his name. But no one knew about his birth when it happened, save a couple of people in the neighborhood. In fact, relatively few people knew of the man until centuries later. Before that, there was just silence and a cry of a baby boy in the night.

Perhaps the moments which shape humanity most, the events that shape our lives most pass by in unobserved silence. Can any of us pinpoint the exact moments we fell in love or knew what we wanted to be when we grew up? Everything, even large events and horrific wars, start with single little flicks and sparks, most of which are utterly untraceable. For anything is there every really a beginning or the end, or perhaps its all a metamorphosis?

Something will happen in 2012 than will change everything we know about our world. I can assure you of this. But will it be big enough for us all to fell the impact at the exact time it happens, for us all to turn our heads and gasp around the world? I don’t know. At times it seems the biggest events happen in the smallest ways.

Recently, there was an article in the Guardian about how people are now choosing to live alone. They still seek out romantic relations, have friends and a variety of social situations, but at the end of the day, they want their own home, their own things just how they left them in the morning, and their own mess to clean up.

I’ve never had the luxury of being able to live alone. Living without a companion would not only be unsafe, but it would be impossible. Despite my therapist’s best intentions, I am unable to live alone, a fully independent life who needs no one from the moment she gets up in the morning until she falls asleep.

Oh, I’ve dreamt of what it would be like to live alone in that fully independent modern life with all the luscious luxuries of a modern westerner. When I am feeling surly at my companion I do wish that I could make my own dinner, thank you very much, and that I could step into a hot shower and stay there for as long as I like, without being asked if I could ‘save some water for the fish.’ Living with anyone, doesn’t matter who or for how long, is a massive irritation. Two lives in close proximity cannot help but create friction as a basic principle of interpersonal physics.

I believe that being dependent on other people has led me to become much more grace filled than I would have otherwise become. The fact is, I cannot slink back into the shadows and exist for hours on end no matter how antisocial I am feeling. If the person who you find to be extremely annoying is also the person feeding you dinner, suddenly that person, no matter how much they are rubbing you the wrong way, is the individual responsible for keeping you alive. You have to look them in the eye over dinner because they are feeding you dinner. This means, of course, that you have to make some sort of conversation with that person, which also means, inevitably, you discover that you have more in common with the irritant than you would have thought. Then I, at least, come to the realisation that I am irritating too, in my own special way.

Because I need people, I am forced to forgive. This is an action which I do not come by naturally. (If anyone does tell you that they are good at forgiveness do not believe them and do not under any circumstances loan them any money… If you do you’re not getting it back.) I would never think of forgiving anybody if I didn’t have to. This is the reward for living in close proximity to others, it forces you to step outside of yourself, to have your skills of forgiveness and love stretched rather than being able depend simply on what you thought your own capabilities of love would be. The friction created simply by living with someone, being unable to just get up and leave, is what forces us to become better within ourselves, and in turn, to each slowly refine our behaviour towards one another.

I can’t help but wonder how long it will be fashionable to live alone. Will those people eventually break down, realizing that life alone might look perfect, but it is precariously balanced on characteristics well out of our control. Sooner or later we all get to the point where we have no choice, we have to live in community because we cannot live by ourselves. I am luck enough to need people, to be unable to live alone and thus uncover a truly dark side of myself. Perhaps, in learning to forgive the annoyances of others, I am spared from seeing the isolating foibles of myself.

What do we look at to determine the value of a person? In these times there is, of course all the clichés we can imagine. There is power, money, sex appeal, popularity, public opinion. And at naming all of these we roll our eyes and say that those qualities shouldn’t matter… But of course they do. However, perhaps if we are to look at a person’s accomplishments we need to examine what they have overcome. I want to put before you that achievement is relative and determined by our own starting point, and what we have done to rise above it.

For a select few runners this year, racing in the olympic marathon will be the achievement of a lifetime. But when someone who has sustained a spinal cord injury learns to walk five steps that is, undeniably, an achievement as well. Now, which is a greater achievement (if either)? On what criteria do we determine a level of achievement? Whose mother is prouder? How does one quantify impressiveness?

The argument ones level of success is dependent upon where he has come from is nothing new. Indeed, coming from a stable home, going to the best schools, never having to worry about putting food on the table is going to put a person at a decisive advantage in life. That’s nothing new. But when we consider how much a person has overcome, then sudden the goal posts begin to move. A person with extreme dyslexia who barely gets a passing grade in English class has an entirely different context than someone who loves writing and reading getting the same grade. The other person might have stayed after school every night and spent an admirable amount of energy to receive that grade, where as I would have clearly slacked off in my studies. We both received the same grade, his is laudable, mine is not.

It is important to note that I am not advocating that we should only achieve to the same level, or that mediocrity should be what we strive for. Just the opposite. If we all stand on the shoulders of where we come from, then we should all be excelling to the best of our capabilities. But by default that doesn’t mean that we can ever achieve to the same levels. But our actions which gets us past where we started out are always achievements. No matter how much farther along someone else may be.

The fact that the world recognizes some achievements and not others illustrates not the value of the action, but merely what is valued in our society. But to only recognize say, the top five percent in a field as extraordinary achievers is to assume everyone started on equal footing, with all the same benefits and advantages. And so many of us, who have accomplished great things from having a kid to just learning how to dress ourselves with massive fine motor impairments, look at the cream of society and just wonder if we’ve ever accomplished anything at all, selling ourselves short in the process.

If we look to others to determine the value of our achievements, most of us will never get any recognition. But, as most lauded achievers will tell you, if you take action to seek praise or to directly improve your stature, little credit will become of it. Rather, those who achieve do so not to seek praise, but because there is little else they can do in the face of obscurity.

“Don’t wish your life away,” my mother annoyingly says over the phone. I roll my eyes and sigh so deeply, that she can hear it eight time zones away.

“I just want this part of my life to be over already, so I can move on.” I am whining about wanting to be an adult, to know and understand what I’m supposed to be doing. Mother reminds me that whining isn’t a very adult thing to do, and suggests that I seek a more constructive outlet for my angst. She suggests that I draw, write, paint, go for a walk… To which I say no, no, no, and no. I have backed this woman into a corner, and she knows it, getting off the phone as quickly as possible.

I used to hear the phrase ‘don’t wish your life away’ is one that has always mystified me. How can anything take a life away? Do people really just wish their life away and not do anything? How boring would it be just to sit around and wish rather than be happy with what is in front of you?

It wasn’t until recent days that I’ve realized that, given the opportunity, I would completely wish my life away, or at the very least I’d worry my life away. So often, as I find myself increasingly sucked into adulthood, there are annoying little details, unknown variables, that I wish were solved. I sit on my bed and listen to my friends Skype me about their mortgages or events that staple them down to one place and I find myself just slightly envious. I don’t want my entire life laid out in front of me, knowing each day in advance the surprises and tragedies that would unfold. I tell myself I want to live a life of adventures and unknowns, thinking that makes me superior to my suburban friends. But in truth all of this are lies I tell myself.

The amount of time I waste wishing I knew how my life would unfold is shocking and a bit maddening. Rather than going out and writing letters or seeking opportunities to grab the life I want, or rather wish for, I stay in and think of all possible permutations of disaster that can befall on me. And it does nothing.

The truth is I would be very glad to sit in my room and wish my life away. Living in fear is never beneficial to anyone and usually makes failure only more certain. The wish to remain ‘safe’ is overwhelmingly small minded and stifling. And I, a woman considered by most to be of great adventure, fall victim to it every time.

In the end, to stay safe, to wish one’s life away, is to refuse to live life at all. We are supposed to learn from the challenges which are put in front of us, and to wish we were anywhere else is to throw away, with both hands, all the good gifts which life has given to us. If the point of being here is to learn, to experience, to exist fully in the moment, then to look longingly at somewhere where we don’t currently belong, lustfully wishing that something was different is, quite simply, a failure to thrive.

I think of what my mother said often these days. It’s now spring in London again and the days are getting longer. For today at least, it seems as though life is heading in the direction that I want it to go in. But in the end, it cannot be about me, what I want, or even what I wish to be. Life goes in one direction then the other, trying to teach and begging us to learn before it all becomes too late and we realize that all wished for weren’t the things that really mattered in the first place.

Two years ago, seven different women I know had babies with the course of about nine weeks. Most of the now moms know each other, and it seems that now their conversations revolve around ‘Billy sat up all by himself,’ or ‘Suzie is tracking and its just so exciting.’ It seems as if our competitive and comparative nature isn’t something we develop, rather it is ingrained in us by our parents who start commenting on what we can and cannot yet achieve. There was even a wager on who would start eating solid food first.

I never knew that being a baby was so competitive.

At times when I found myself engaged in these comparison conversations I found myself thinking my mother. When she had me, she was presented with a baby who wouldn’t meet the milestones, at least not in the same time frame as everyone else. I was ten when I learned how walk, well into adulthood I am learning things that most folks have mastered by the age of eight, and last week I had timothy, my three year old friend, peel an orange for me. What milestones did my mom get to talk about when I was a baby? Was I ever ahead of my peers in those early years? How often did she come away from conversations with new mom’s feeling hopeless?

Perhaps I think of my mother in her young adult years more now because because I can almost see her at my age. If I try very hard, I can remember my parents turning thirty and the confusion which still endured long after they thought they would have it all figured out. And I always assumed that when I was their age, I would know it all too. As a watch my friends from the past continue to hit the traditional milestones and forming a nuclear family is nowhere on my radar (nor am I saddened by that), I find myself wondering if my accomplishments even matter. I don’t have the signs of young adulthood that I often thought I would have by this age. There’s no diamond ring or baby blanket in the bassinet. And on the one hand I think “thank God for that.” And yet I find the desire to compare myself to others so strong that I cannot escape it, and I make myself miserable with a double shot of shame, first from realizing that a can’t compare, then ashamed of the fact I wanted to compare in the first place.

During a recent conversation with my mom I asked her how she avoided making such depressing contrasts between myself and other children. I am now realizing that her struggle-filled life gives her a massive amount of wisdom to speak into mine.

“Well, I just avoided the situations where such comparisons were likely to occur.” Looking back, I realize that I have no baby book since the vast majority of pages are labeled with headings like “baby’s first steps,” or other events that did not apply. Today, I do find myself avoiding Facebook, just so I don’t have to look at the candid shots of my traditional friends who show off engagement and wedding photos just because everyone else does the same.

Here in London, none of my friends are married or meeting any of those other traditionalist goals. I’m much more comfortable with their outlook of waiting, watching things unfold rather than making them happen. In many ways, I think this is so much healthier than ‘making things happen’ as many of my friends put it. For them, the wedding and family is the ultimate golden ring to grasp, a final milestone to put in your baby book before having a baby of your own.

I find myself avoiding websites like Facebook and Flickr for the exact same principals that my mother noted. Its not that I’m not happy for my friends as the meet their milestones. I am. But because, I suppose, I am impatient to meet those milestones, I become equally impatient with my friends who think that those milestones are the only ones worthy of any note. And so, I do have trouble seeing my friends plaster their engagement photos and wedding pics up for full display for all 1,212 of their friends. To me, it sometimes feels like a form of bragging.

Who am I to say whether such posts are a form of boastfulness or not? I can only speak to how it feels to watch status updates time after time be elated with starry eyed promises of happily ever after… After a while, all wedding announcements and baby sonograms look the same.

What would true love look like if it didn’t require a status update or a big celebration to come to fruition? Often I look at my friends here and wonder if the greatest proof of love isn’t a quiet assurance and supportiveness which goes unnoticed by most. I see that in friends that are willing to let love and life unfold at its own pace, knowing that good things will come quietly, in their own time, without needing to stop and get the camera for a baby book.

About a month ago I went to see The Way with my father on very high recommendations. The film is about a man [Martin Sheen] who, after the death of his son at the very beginning of the Spanish Camino, decides to take his son’s ashes and complete the 800 kilometer walk himself, leaving small piles of ash at places on the walk which particularly remind him of his son’s love of life.

Like any piece of excellent art, I walked out of the cinema inspired to do something life altering. In the particular instance, I wanted to fly to Spain with a hand-cycle and make my own fifty day trek across the north of Spain, following the path of St. James. I got home and started planning, thinking of the random and intriguing people I would meet, the joys that inevitably come from dependence on fate when one travels, what it would be like to wake up each morning not knowing what I was going to see or where I was going to lay my head that night.

In many ways, I feel that the balance between complete unknowing and complete trust is where life is meant to be lived. It is there that we grow everyday, remain open to what anyone has to teach us, stay hungry enough to be grateful, and admit to ourselves that we are dependent of grace and providence.

When I came home to London I found myself walking behind St. Martin’s of the Field dreaming about how I would pack my bag for a hike across Spain and fit it on a hand cycle when one of the Big Issue sellers I see everyday, Charlie, greeted me in his regal and deep voice and gave me his customary playful bow.

“Morning Governor,” I shouted back.

Further up, the man who sells roasted chestnuts in the winter, ice cream in the summer, called my name and wished me to have a good day. Passing the Quaker Meeting House, Jeremiah was putting up the laminated sign which announced the congregation’s next meeting. Later my friend called, desperately in need of my printer… And an onion for soup he was making for dinner. A few hours later I asked him to come back over and help me with a fuse which had blown in the kitchen. He brought some soup.

It took me a while to come to the conclusion which is now probably staring you all in the face. Life, my life at least, is The Camino which starts each day where ever I am and ends up God only knows where. Due to the life I have been born into because of my conditions, and the life I have actively chosen, I can not carry the illusion either for myself or to fool others, that I am in control. I am dependent on those I meet on the way from the woman who opens a door for me one morning an Café Nero, to the casher who knows that I like my tea with milk and sugar and a straw and in my cup holder because she sees me ask for this each morning.

A life well lived looks like being interdependent on a motley crew because it is the only option for survival that’s in front of you. One cannot lock himself up amongst people of his own religion, political affiliation or economic strata and still claim to have a life that impacts others. Such a tribal lifestyle isn’t effective in helping to progress the world, it doesn’t promote peace or encourage justice, it’s archaic.

My point is not that my life is inclusive or progressive because I chose it to be. My point is that its cannot be otherwise. Due to my vulnerabilities, my physical disabilities, my weak social status, I find that I must take whatever help is offered to me, from whomever offers it. And I, in turn, get to know a ragamuffin crew who, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t even bother to look at. They become my loved ones because I need them, and in our service to one another we become the strongest (if unlikely) friends imaginable.

The Camino is a pilgrimage precisely because no individual can do the 800 kilometer trek of his own and survive. Most people live under the delusion that they can be self sufficient in life, be in complete control, and have a full life. You can’t. And yet that illusion still survives. Journeys such as The Camino work as a metaphor, to teach pilgrims outside of their world what should be happening within their own lives. Sometimes, such separation is the only way we learn the lessons we need to get through our thick heads in order to become the persons we were meant to be.

I still want to walk The Camino one day. The challenge of exploring a mountainous territory across a country that I love leaves me restless and hungry for the experience. But for right now, I see the purpose of such a pilgrimage in my own life. We are all going somewhere. Our lives are jumbled together in the most haphazard way that we unexpected complement each other on our path, providing just the right at just the right time. Life is The Camino, we need only to accept what’s put on our path.

For most of the past two months, I’ve been on a Facebook strike. Such abstinence seems to be unthinkable for someone of my generation. Facebook has been a part of my life since 2004 and a great way to keep up with friends since moving across the pond. Recently however, with my life taking some very odd turns and many of my friend’s choosing to go a more traditional route in their own lives, I needed a break. At my age, the holidays mean an onslaught of baby pictures and engagement announcements which, somehow, Facebook can manage to bundle together in some sort of conspiracy that can bombard you with the idea that everyone else in the world is young, beautiful, fertile, and knitting baby blankets.

During this time of self inflicted celibacy two events occurred. First, Facebook decided to turn itself into some sort of historical time capsule and second, a friend who had just announced that she was having twins, miscarried.

I think all of us in life hate to think that nothing, even the most natural and yet miraculous milestones we can have, is ever guaranteed. If the ring is on our finger or the pregnancy test shows a red plus sign, we have made a contract with fate. We are going to have reason to celebrate, we can shout it to the world in our Facebook statuses, and the happy event will happen. Guaranteed.

And on the one hand, why not? We should celebrate at full steam our times of joy. But many are finding out, perhaps for the first time in their lives, that the hope for our lives we place in the future, sometimes doesn’t come. One week after my friend announced to the world her amazing news, hew new world was crushed. Despite our open book policy, it seems not a whole lot of miscarriages are announced on Facebook.

What will happen when we are able to look back at lives of the new people we meet and see that, well, there seems to be a kid missing from current family photos, or she used to wear a diamond ring and now she doesn’t? If its impossible to avoid pain and disappointment in our lives, do we really want our new acquaintances finding out about these events by our status updates and wall posts followed by years of silence?

Facebook, I believe, presents a unique problem in that it’s main population it that of young adults. Ours is a generation which has, seemingly, always been protected and was able to hold off being an adult just a little bit longer thanks to grad schools and the misleading belief thing things always improve over time. My friends are just entering a point where they are discovering loss and heartache. For many of them they do not know how to be cautiously optimistic.

Perhaps, by seeing disappointments of years past we make ourselves more vulnerable to prying eyes. Or maybe we are simply made aware of our vulnerabilities which are already there. We all have pain from our pasts we would like to forget, and pain coming at us which we could never imagine. Perhaps a tool such as Facebook allows us to share in our joys. But the question is: Do any of us have the strength which can only come from vulnerability in sharing each other’s sorrow?

At first our friendship was easy. A favor for him here, something for me there. It was a relationship which hardly seemed tit for tat, as the jokes seemed to cover any form of transaction we pursued. It was the perfect no-pressure friendship, which lasted for several years, seeing each other week in and week out, without any source of conflict. Until The Storms came. Now The Storms themselves were not my fault, nebulous as they may seem. In fact, The Storms had no direct impact whatsoever on the friendship itself. But The Storms directly affected me, and my own reactions rocked the friendship. I became exceedingly difficult to love and, in my mind at least, my friend became incredibly irritating.
Here we sat at a crossroads. Either choose to forgive the other of their own special form of obnoxious behavior, or go our separate ways. Here was where our friendship began in earnest.
I have often heard that love is a choice. Through hot summer weddings and cold church services told me over and over again that love is an action, not a feeling or chemistry. You choose to love somebody. I heard it so many times growing up that it managed to loose all meaning for me. It wasn’t until recently, when I saw two people wittingly choose not to love each other that I realized that it the end, love comes down to something as mundane as choices.
The difference between friends and family is that, like it or not, you are stuck with the people in your family. You can’t leave them. Travel across oceans and foreign lands but somehow, but annoyingly, DNA and blood type always manages to hunt you down. In reality, friends are people you can walk away from. They aren’t going to hunt you down and ask for a kidney at two AM on a Tuesday morning.
The more you love a friend however, the more of a conscience decision you have to make not to walk away when things become difficult and The Storms hit. Friends are family you choose not to walk away from.
In recent weeks I’ve been tempted to walk out on several friends. As we get older the friends of the past have lives which are becoming less and less like mine. Or mine is becoming less and less like theirs. Often these differences become catalysts for conflict, sometimes flat out pain. So for the first time this holiday season I found myself making a choice, and knowingly deciding to love my friends even in the moments when I felt like picking them up and hurling them across the room.
As for me friend who is willing to stay with me during the storms, despite my erratic behavior and the unfavourable conditions, he stays. And I stay. Both of us know that we have chosen to create a relationship based on choice, not on what we feel in that moment. And that choice gives each of us the freedom not to worry about our passing feelings during The Storms.