This past week I've been crawling through the re-adjustment of being back in the U.S. After a week in Mexico City, I'm missing friends and street vendors and crowded buses, and the days are grey and quiet here in San Diego. I didn't know what "help" would look like, but I asked some friends for it. They've done the things that good friends do: they've called and written and sent me scriptures and prayers. They haven't busted into "The sun'll come out, TOMORROW...!" or anything ridiculous, but they've reminded me that life is good. The striking thing is that they've done that without platitudes or prescriptions for me.
What several friends did do-- not by my prompting, but apparently innately knowing what is good for the soul-- was tell me stories. It didn't occur to me to ask-- far from it!-- but I've read and heard a collection of beautiful moments that they experienced these past few days. I've read about sunrises over the ocean, and mist in fields of sunflowers. They told me about kids jumping in and out of a pool. They gave me a glimpse into the texture of a day, telling me what they saw, what they heard, what they felt. They didn't interpret or draw conclusions from it; they just told it.
The comfort I found in that probably explains why we read books and watch TV and movies, but it's also different with friends. The deep breath I took and the smile with which I responded had to do with feeling a little less far away, with thinking, ah, this is where ___ spent time today.
Will you tell people where you were today? What you saw? What made you smile? What made you sigh? It is these things that make us humans, that make us real, that make us friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment