Paths less traveled and good fences...

After an overdue mass email to friends and family, I've been catching up with certain friends. Two in particular. My email conversations with them are deep and personal - sharing both our private selves and our concern for greater things. Both of these friends have made life choices that don't parallel mine at all, at least factually. One would never put our generic profiles into a database and consider it an easy match. And yet, it is. Always has been.

This and other developments have me thinking a lot about the people in my life. Who's there. Why. For how long. For what. Both of the above friendships could have me on a plane tomorrow if something went astray. I'd never think twice. Our paths are different, though they met once, but somehow they always remain together... as if our journey is the same though our means are quite different. I think about my closest friends and I think that's true for the lot. We share both heart and mind, self and world, laughter and tears. These are the relations that keep me sane and together. They help me grow, yet be comfortable where I am. They help me be a greater me. They make it so easy to give. And they easily give.

Not sure what will happen in a year and what my life choices will be, I've been thinking about my relations here. Am I parallel enough in journeys with people to keep contact with them, to grow with them and to share with them when this shared point is over? I've found myself staring into space many times over the past few weeks pondering that question. Wondering what I want and need from people. What I get. What I don't get. What I give and don't.

In the past I surrounded myself with thinkers and feelers, doers and delegaters, takers and givers, creators and consumers, movers and shakers.... not separately, but together. All in the same person. I doubted my discriminating tastes for awhile - wondered if I asked too much. But I've found those people before, and one of the things I love the most about them is they don't settle. So far my lack of settling has kept me in very good company. I have no reason to think that won't continue to be true and I need to be more comfortable letting go of people with whom it is not true. Or at least limiting my relations with them.

One of my goals here was to "challenge and establish personal truths." This is one: There is no luck in friendship. People get what they give. I give greatly and expect great things from great people in return. That's totally fair...and it works.