the reciprocity of old-growth friendships….

One morning recently,  I had sent a short text of encouragement to one of my dearest friends,  who was experiencing a very recent and raw tragic loss.  Apparently,  my text had arrived just as she was walking through a flood of unbearable emotions.  She called me immediately.

In this highly charged moment of my friend’s grief,  I was (intuitively,  it would seem)  able to know what to share with her.  I was able to pull from my life files a lesson that I’d absorbed while walking through a similar (yet much less acute)  tragedy several years before.

In the midst of my tragedy,  life had taken months and many words of wisdom from friends to impress this lesson upon me—but I was able to express it to her in a single phone call.  So dire was this moment that she absolutely needed her answer in a heartbeat—and life had given it to me to give to her.

After I hung up the phone,  I was utterly floored that such a moment had come into being.  How had such a concept floated up so readily when I hadn’t given it thought in years?

What was equally amazing is that she had been able to receive it from me instantly.  Nothing much was lost in translation.  Perhaps our history—16 years worth—had allowed this ease of connection.

Perhaps not only the time we have shared,  but also the depth,  had made this moment possible.  We have shared births, weddings, divorces, deaths.  We have shared many of the same circles of spiritual friendship over the years,  pulling our bond even tighter.  We share a similarly tragic but increasingly hopeful life history that continues to unfold.

But mostly,  we have,  time after time,  shared of ourselves.  Our fears,  our discoveries,  our god-awful character flaws—and always our lessons.  Sometimes accompanied by insane laughter,  sometimes by gut-wrenching sobs,  and sometimes by the simple and cool breeze of calm,  we have shared these many moments.

The intuitive moment this morning,  then,  was not an isolated one.  It appears to be simply another ring added to the very solid and old tree of friendship we planted a long time ago—and another limb to which we can climb,  a higher vantage point from which we can perceive life’s unfoldings.

It is fascinating to think of the progression of our friendship—that in our earliest days,  my friend had been a mentor to me of such unfathomable discipline and balance that I found myself awe-struck on a regular basis—that over these years,  this relationship has graced me,  first through imitation and then in an internalized way,  with some of those same traits of hers that were so unfathomable to me early on—and that these changes being in place in me,  in turn,  allowed me to grow more fully into my own skin,  and ultimately,  to have learned that lesson a few years ago— only to be able to pass it on to her at just the right moment.