On Friendship and Happiness

This morning while thinking and pondering about friendship and happiness, I found some answers... some consolation in the following wisdom quotations most of which were posted by Maria Popover, quoting the Poet David Whyte, in her newsletter, Brainpickings.

“HAPPINESS is something to do, someone to love, something to hope for” — Immanuel Kant. 

“FRIENDSHIP is a mirror to presence and a testament to forgiveness. Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn. A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them. An undercurrent of real friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy. All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die...

“HEARTBREAK is unpreventable; the natural outcome of caring for people and things over which we have no control… 

Heartbreak begins the moment we are asked to let go but cannot, in other words, it colors and inhabits and magnifies each and every day; heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through even the most average life. Heartbreak is an indication of our sincerity: in a love relationship, in a life’s work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is [an] essence and emblem of care… Heartbreak has its own way of inhabiting time and its own beautiful and trying patience in coming and going...

 “Heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream… But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way...

“There is almost no path a human being can follow that does not lead to heartbreak” 

— Poet David Whyte in “Consolations.”

And so, I rest... now almost three months since she died. It is now time for me to wander a bit... and to be grateful for the forty years we had together. I pray that gratitude will overcome my sense of deep loss. 

Stay tuned.