Over the past few days I’ve been coming to the realization that there are a number of different dimensions to each relationship we have with people. Some people are friends. You take the friend vector, and they lie somewhere along that vector. They may be mere acquaintances, or they may be very good friends. In many ways, there are many good things about these types of relationships. They are around when the proverbial bad times hit the fan. They stick it out, and they’re always willing to be there and give you a shoulder to cry on.
Then there is the “smile factor” dimension. There are a few people in your life that just make you smile. I really don’t know how else to describe what they do to you and how to characterize the relationship you have with these people. Some of them make you smile a little, almost like a warm breeze in the autumn sun. Others make you grin like an idiot, tug at your every emotion. You notice both of you breathing in sync, your hearts beating in sync. Every breath, every fiber of your being is being consumed by not being able to stop smiling. Even when your heart is hurting so bad that you can’t but let the tears flow, you are smiling and wanting nothing more than to be close. Time has no meaning in that place.
In my life I’ve been fortunate enough to have three people fall on that dimension at a 9 or 10 on a 10 point scale. Every single time we were fortunate enough to be traveling the same way for a short while through our lives, and then invariably we move onwards, both of us looking for our own direction. It’s not that we’re not interested in each other, we are, very much so. But yet neither of us are willing to sacrifice the happiness of the other, or themselves, to move, make a change, and be with the other person.
Why is that so? Why does one only recognize how rare and necessary this type of connection is when one gets almost too old to be able to do anything about it? Will these people be there when you need them? Is friendship the dimension that one should bet their future on, or throw it all to the wind, and let reckless abandon, complete emotion, love, and infatuation rule your life? Is complete happiness at the end of the smiling or friend rainbow?
We as a human race bring so much to the table, yet we seem to have a complete inability to simply pursue and allow everyone else to pursue their emotional happiness. Why do we keep erecting barriers to the pursuit of happiness? Countries, cultural stereotypes, prejudices, money, and power. If ultimately we are all here to be happy, why would we not enable ourselves as inhabitants of this world to both seek and be able to pursue this happiness?
I’ve had five people ask me today if I was all right. To every one of them I’ve had to answer that I was not, but at some point I will be. In the past little while, since coming to this realization, I’ve been searching for my smile. For the soul that has been so silent for so long. That has been denied its existence and necessity for much too long. I am still afraid of making a mistake, something that I used to never be. Yet I know that a change is coming. My true self can not be denied much longer and still survive. I fear the loneliness, the path without the smiles, and even more the path without friends. I will miss the few friends I have made, the ones that will not keep in touch down the dark road that lies ahead. To you all I wish you farewell. May the world treat you well. To the others that will keep watch over me while I traverse the next abyss, I thank you now, for I know not how I will emerge on the other side.