A friend is someone I like and don’t mind hanging out with. People come and go in the course of a lifetime. There have been a few instances when I became close to someone and considered the person my “best friend”. But circumstance changed. Time and distance took away the intimacy and often best friends became stranger than strangers.
Best friends think of each other constantly. They share secrets and have the capacity of deep understanding. It is an emotional and spiritual connection. Although lovers are not always best friends; best friends are most definitely lovers.
While I move from one “best friend” to another, the ancients were more passionate about this very special relationship.
According to Qin Shi, Liezi said:
“Bo Ya was good at playing the qin (seven-stringed zither). Zhong Ziqi was good at to listening to the qin. When Bo Ya’s will was towards high mountains in his playing, Zhong Ziqi would say, ‘How towering like Tai Shan (mountain)!’ When Bo Ya’s will was towards flowing water in his playing, Zhong Ziqi would say, ‘How vast are the rivers and oceans!’ Whatever Bo Ya thought of Ziqi would never fail to understand. Bo Ya said, ‘Amazing! Your heart and mine are the same!’ When Ziqi died, Bo Ya broke the strings (of his qin) and vowed never to play again.”
Quoted passage taken from Wikipedia.
Image from: http://www.chinancient.com/guqin/guqin/
“I get awful gloomy (I mean VERY gloomy)
Now and then in this town
Cause it’s always so hard
To find a real pard
Who’ll play in your yard
When you’re down.
Since the talk you and me (I mean you and I)
Have had
I’ve got a good friend, I think…At least you’re not so VERY bad…
What say?
Let’s be buddies!
What say? Let’s be pals.
What say? Let’s be buddies
And keep up each other’s morales.
I may
Never shout it,
But many’s the time I’m blue…
What say?
How’s about it?
Can I be a buddy to you?”
–Cole Porter
Reading this made me I realize how very grateful for my “best friends.” In this moving society, people often move quite far afield. Pretty much always now my dearest friends live some distance away, never next door! And now I must confess that one of my very best crazy girlfriend, one whose proximity was so diabolical and meaningful has moved father than is easy to navigate. I’ve feel inconsolable at times. Yet I know we will manage to find a way back to each other’s doors, but not the ease of past times. The connection of this relationship will remain, and I’m sure we will intuitively work towards that end.
The apparatus pushes constantly
And futily against the given
All the surfaces I seek to breach
To penetrate, to inhabit, to know
But all the adamantine faces
Of the Other are fierce against
The intrusion so all I penetrate
Is my own transparent imagination
Anon.
What if there is no “best”?
So true! It brought tears to my eyes. I have no real friends, no best friend, and people come and go in my life as if a friend is a passing use or entertainment. But suddenly i have been opened to the fact that my husband tries to be just that for me, every day. Today I will go home and tell him I love him.