Loving the Old and Letting in the New

Dear Sass

Are the old friends really better than the friends to be? It sure feels that way and it leaves me feeling stuck. And lonely. I walk the streets of this town and look for familiar footprints but I see them less and less. There used to be couches in our shared kitchens. Now everyone I love lives in a different place. Do I have enough love within me to love a new lot as much as I love the old one? It's exhausting to contemplate. I'm not giving up on the dearest of the dear, but I need more friendship in my daily life and I do believe I'm scared to move on. Can you spare a wise word?

Yours,

International Harvester

Dear International Harvester,

What a great question! For the last few years I've been missing my old friends, and I've wondered why it's so hard to cultivate close friendships in the present. You've articulated something that I think many of us feel but are too scared or sad to name. Because this one's so near to my own heart, I'm not really sure what to say. It's a little weird and self-referential, but the only way I could respond to this question was to ask, "What would Sass say?"

Sass would say that it's ok to grieve the passing of special friendships and communities of friends. The particular alchemy of timing, geography, affinity, purpose, and commitment that yields such relationships is rare and unrepeatable. We are right to hold it in our hearts with wonder and reverence and even a little longing. Sass would say that our longing is probably not just for a friendship or community, it's also for a moment in time and for who we were at that moment. Maybe it's about being connected to the world in a way that feels really meaningful. Maybe it's about feeling whole. Such longing is deep - goes beyond this lifetime even into the vast space of some invisible but felt-in-our-bones ancestry. Where is our tribe?

And then, I'm pretty sure that Sass would say that we must strive to continually open our hearts, in spite of our grief and longing, in spite of our fear and hopelessness. Because ultimately love and connection and wholeness are not about object or other, they are about source and self. Maybe allowing ourselves to fully grieve the passing of each moment of our lives, the painful and joyful both, will allow us to open our hearts to the fact that each moment passing delivers us into a present that is continually opening to us. 

Finally, Sass is a big believer in the idea that our lives are exactly right at every moment. Which isn't to say that we don't evaluate and make changes, but rather that the materials that we need to do exactly what we need to do are with us all the time. Looking back on it, I've been using those materials to do some really deep important work on myself in the last several years, work that is helping me become a person that can not only enter into, but sustain deep and loving friendships through all of the passages of a rich lifetime. This is mostly because I'm learning to sustain a deep and loving connection with myself, which isn't always easy. I'll bet you, International Harvester, have been doing really important work, too. 

I guess I'm ready to become one with Sass again to say that our hearts really are big enough. They're even big enough to sustain us through the times when friends are scarce and far away. And they're certainly big enough and wise enough to guide us where we need to go, and to whom we need to be there with. At least I'm pretty sure.

Yours Truly,

Sass