Right in front of your nose...

The thing about friendships is often times you are blindsided by otherwise blatantly obvious truths. You could even think the truths are about your friends, or perhaps that is where they originate. But the reason that they resonate so deeply and so dis-harmoniously within your core is because perhaps your friends flaws tell you more about you, than they do about them.

I have some of the most strange people as friends. But I wouldn't have just anyone as my friend. You have to be special. You have to be vulnerable. Real. Emotional. Fragile. Honest. And I have realised, flawed.

The flaws strike me down like a knife in my consciousness as I am on the way to bed. I'm tired. My eyes are closing. Yet I have to write this before my feelings dissipate into the nothingness of all things lost in the midst of the mad scramble called life.

We are all just eking our way through this life. We take two steps forward, one back, one to the left, one to the right, end up in our original spot, rethink our position, retreat, go into hiding, lick our wounds, summon up the courage from somewhere within our being to try again, to put ourselves out on the line again. To put our lip gloss on and to pretty our hair. We break down the high walls and we drain the moats around our hearts.... We allow another in. We allow ourselves to love again. To forgive. To be loved. To dream that maybe this time it will be how it is supposed to be. We drag our children through this exploration with us. We think that they are growing up, but meanwhile we as the parents are the ones suffering from exponential growth in the humanness department... All the time whilst trying to maintain that we have all things under control.

So often times I am struck not so much by what is said. But by what is not said. The careful omission. The wry smile. The vacuous silence tells me about the fear of judgment. The fear that their choices will not be accepted or that their authority will be tested.

The major thing it tells me about myself, is that we are all so similar. I sometimes think there is nothing such as an authentic thought. That everything we have ever felt before or even said before has already been felt and said a million times before, so what is the point? The point is our flaws connect us. They make us part of the collective. So your separation is only an illusion. Better out than in.