As I look out the window at the sunshine on my garden, I remember the many days that I saw the same view differently—when the glass was streaked with rain, when the ground was hard with frost, and the plants that are budding and growing so beautifully today were nothing but tiny seeds or bare sticks. It all changed so slowly, but it changed so much. And as good as it looks today, I know that there are even better things ahead—the apple blossoms will ripen into apples, the rose stems will bloom with their own unique colours and fill the air with their intoxicating aromas, there will be blueberries and strawberries and maybe this year we’ll finally get some grapes from the grape vine, now that it’s more established. It takes time, establishing. Our blueberry bushes give us a lot more now than they used to, and the apple tree is a little bigger every year. Life is like that, too, isn’t it?
Continue reading Slow HappinessTag: friendships
Stop Looking For Friends, And Start Making Them
The treasure of true friendship is some of the richest, most valuable wealth in the whole world. If financial poverty eventually makes life unsustainable, friendship poverty makes it unbearable. By true friendship, of course, I don’t just mean acquaintances you enjoy a laugh with every once in a while, or online “friends” you can share pictures of your dinners with. I mean the real thing. The deep thing. The close thing. The uninhibited, understanding, unhurried and unbreakable thing. I mean the people who stick even when other people let go, the people who love you even after you’ve done wrong—and too much to let you get away with it. I mean the people who laugh with you about stupid inside jokes and cry with you about losses and disappointments and who know exactly what you’re thinking just by the faces you make. I mean the people you can trust enough to share life with—not just the social media highlight reel life, but the really real life, in all the mess and joy and shame of it. Friendships like these are more valuable than Blackbeard’s buried treasure (which is still buried, by the way). If we discovered his treasure hoard without ever developing true friendships, our lives would still be impoverished. Which raises the question: how do we find the treasure of true friendship?
Continue reading Stop Looking For Friends, And Start Making Them
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