I sent this to a few of my great friends last night. I’m extremely lucky to have some amazingly good friends in my life who hit all of these marks. Do you have good friends? Are you a good friend? Looking at the list, I thought to myself, no wonder why we love our dogs so much. No wonder why the dog is called “man’s best friend.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
My friend sent this to our group chat this morning. I am going to make this my “template for being”, for the rest of 2020. This is the perfect year to become your own best friend. One time when I was muddling around with a tough decision, one of my dear friends said to me, “What advice would you give to me, in this situation?” That was a huge perspective changer. I am much softer, kinder, more compassionate, forgiving and understanding with my friends and my family, than I tend to be with myself. We work hard to be “good” in relationships, but we often leave the most important relationship out of that equation. Our most important relationship is with ourselves. No one will be with us longer, on this Earth. And if that statement still feels/sounds/seems too “selfish” understand that it follows that we cannot love others any better than we love ourselves. Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. I am guessing that Jesus wanted us to love our neighbors a whole lot better, than the conditional, demeaning, cold, harsh way that we sometimes treat ourselves. It also follows that if we don’t learn to love ourselves, we are starving for love, so we try to suck it dry from other people/things/experiences outside of ourselves. We soon find that our neediness, or that “giving to get”, doesn’t work in the long term, and we start resenting the very people and objects we claim to love, and thus, a vicious cycle continues.
Be your own best friend for the rest of this year. Make a Valentines pact to fall in love with yourself. When you listen to your inner critic, ask yourself, “Would I speak to my best friend this way?” When you make a health/life/relationship choice, ask yourself, “Would I advise my best friend make this choice?” When you give the gift of time, money or service, ask yourself, “Is my motivation to give here, clearly altruistic, or am I secretly trying to manipulate getting one of my needs met from outside sources (and if so, can I find a way to meet these needs myself)? Am I keeping expectations chained to this “gift”?” When you let other people dictate how your life should go/be/look like, ask yourself, “Would I want my best friend to give his or her power away? Would I want my best friend to be a victim?” People don’t realize that if we all experienced our own lives, acting as our own best friends, the world would be a happier, healthier, more loving, giving place than it has ever been before. The following verse from the Bible is read to us at practically every wedding that we ever attend. Try to look at it in the context of loving yourself. It takes on a whole, interesting new meaning and depth, doesn’t it?
No fortune for today, pure Love is our greatest fortune.
My husband is visiting his best friends from college this weekend. I met all of these guys, including my husband, when I was eighteen years old. This middle stage of life is full of so much change – our elders are becoming more fragile, our kids are gaining independence at warp speed, and the wrinkles on my face are unfortunately appearing at warp speed, too. Yet, certain things, the most important things, don’t change at all. In fact these things, that stand taller and become more obvious beacons than ever, are the steadying rocks, in this big, swirling sea of change. The things that don’t change are the feelings that we have for each other and the memories that we share.
My husband’s best friend is the salt-of-the-earth. Everyone who meets him, loves him. He loves kids, he loves his friends, he loves animals, and he loves his wife, and he loves his family. This man loves life. He has been a firefighter since we were in college. He fought the fires that raged on the Pentagon on 9/11. This man was the best man in our wedding, but before my husband and I got to that step in our relationship, I got more than one lecture from my husband’s best friend that I had better be kind and take care of his “meatball.” (my husband) When I first met my husband’s best friend’s extended family – a large, raucous, always laughing, always smiling, always joking, always having each others’ back, Irish family, I knew, in an instant, that I wanted to have a family just like theirs.
Last night, my husband texted me a picture of him, with his best friend and his best friend’s wife, all encircled in a big embrace. The picture screams, LOVE. And it warms my heart to no end, to know, that in this big, sometimes overwhelming stream of constant transition and change, the solid rocks remain steady. And they always will.
