I have a great friend. She is the best and she treats me with love and respect, she is encouraging, she makes me feel that I can do anything and she has so many friends that she loves and treats them with respect. She is kind and encouraging. I can see that all her connections are authentic. We were talking the other day, in one of our conversations about how impossible it is for her to see them all. She clearly cares greatly about them. Most of her friends honestly love her as she is, and want the best for her. We are all hoping to steal a bit more of her presence in our lives. The one thing that I remember more clearly about the topic is when she says I can not see everyone but I prioritise spending time with myself.
I found that her philosophy around friendship is beautiful, contradicting, and honest. And there are a few lovely themes in my mind, let me try to organise them. First, love is huge and you can love and be beautiful and kind with the world if you want. There is no reason for you to love less as you go meeting people in the world, when I use the word love I am referring to a more kind and platonic type of love. Second, love yourself first and make sure that is your priority. Third, we need a little bit of order to organise ourselves to find ways and time to see and meet those that we care about the most.
Love is a huge word, it is caring deeply about another human being, and for some of us, it seems like it is a finite resource, some kind of fuel-like feeling that you transfer from one thing to another. It might be finite but more like a star, with an energy that travels through the universe and touches people who don’t need to be aware of its existence, yet it is there. The sun is warm and even on the most cloudy days, you can still feel its presence. I see love more like that and I am not sure when and how we decided that it is a transactional good. In advance, thank you for reading, and thank you for your love. I believe that Maria is a star. What better thing to do than allow myself to be loved.
Love yourself first. We all know about this and there are countless books, courses, and conferences about it. I am actually doing a program called Yo Primero (I first). Yet we struggle to create space and the ways to achieve it. Especially when a lot of the things around me tend to be beautiful and amazing. I am connected in one way or another to so many lives and I could always be doing something, a concert with a friend, a movie with another one, a friend of my partner so I will go because I am a good partner. The list is endless and I am scared to be perceived as an unfair person, a selfish, egocentric human, and a bad friend. But I actually love you all for real and I wish, like Maria, I could be in many places at the same time, so I get to spend a lot of time with all the people I love. There are so many people I care about and want to know about, even though my love is endless, my body and my time are. So I am sorry if I say no in the future, please still remember that I love you.
Every week I make sure that I have a couple of coffees with people I love, a few calls, and WhatsApp voice messages that keep me in the loop of my family and friends. I found that I actually need to add them to my calendar and to my to-do list so I make them happen. It has been lovely having organised brunches with Tiffany and walks with some of the people I respect and love. Yet, I am struggling to do what Maria was explaining, opening time for myself, a date with Pedro. I have done a couple and they have been lovely and important for me. I like to go to the movies and go social dancing, yet that one is not with myself. I guess this is something that I want to work on so I can enjoy my own love (chinaso =That’s what she said). I guess this moment of writing is also a great quality time for me.
Loving is a tool that doesn’t require presence, but it is lovely when we take a second to send a message and connect with the people we appreciate in life.
Gracias for reading and loving,
Pedro