Good Morning Sunshine!

Each day a new beginning.

“Regardless of what has happened in the past, this moment, this day, is our everything.” I know this to be true. This is what it is to be present, and to understand that despite everything___for me at this time the loss of dearest Thomas. But even he is not absolutely everything any more than I am! We happen to have personal insight here because we are alive, think, and feel. Being in touch with the self can feel more elusive. “Regardless of what has happened in the past, this moment, this day, is everything.___It contains all the things we need to be happy if only quietly and thoughtfully within ourselves.___We can think and talk and remember the joys of the past for they are a part of us. We are what the past has made us, and we shall be tomorrow what w make ourselves today. It is only common sense that we make the best of everything, that we find fulfillment in the faith that tomorrow’s memories will be even happier than todays.” Joyce Hifler.

What lovely thoughts these are, and I can apply them to how I feel. Pearls of wisdom. I am certain of the following as well!

“There is a thread of sameness in your life and mine. There is a sameness in the sense that no matter how different we are, we can identify with each other’s problems and hopes aspirations. You may have the basic quality and serenty, and I frivolity, but we can still communicate through that same small basic truth which neither of us recognizes as our special channel of sameness.___ If there is any greatness in either of us, it will be the fact that we work not from one stationary level, but from many levels, according to where we find the sameness. We cannot successfully look at one person and down at another, but always across. No matter how seemingly superior or lowly the level, somewhere there is a thread of sameness.”

This I firmly believe in. I find that acrrying myself according, as the expecting equal of others I meet means surprising them, depending on where they are at. My mind turns to friendships. There is a poem called A Good Friend that has a couple lines in it. “There is no man so poor that he is not rich if have a good friend; there is no man so poor he is not poor without a friend.”

A Good Friend

To have a good friend is one of the highest delights of life; to be a good friend is one of the nobles and difficult undertakings. Friendship depends not upon fancy, imagination or sentiment, but upon character, There is no man so poor that he is not rich if he have a friend: there is no man so rich that he is not poor without a friend. But friendship is a word made to cover many kindly, impermanent relationships. Real friendship is abiding. Like charity, it suffereth long and is kind. Like love, it vauneth not itself, but pursues the even tenor of its way, unaffrighted by ill report, loyal in adversity, the solvent of infelicity, the shining jewel of happy days. Friendship has not the iridescent joys of love, though it is closer than is often known to the highest truest love. Its heights are ever serene, its vallys know few clouds. To aspire to friendship one must cultivate a capacity for faithful affection, a beautiful disinterestedness, a clear discernment. Friendship is a gift, but it is also an acquirement. It is like the rope with which two climbers in the high mountains bind themselves for safety, and only a coward cuts the rope when a comrade is in danger. From Cicero to Emerson, and long before Cicero, and forever after Emerson, the praises of friendship are precious and to be treasured. But to have a whole, a real friend is worthy high endeavor, for faith, truth, courage, and loyalty bring one close to the Kingdom of Heaven. By Atmos

I found the poetry book this poem is in, in a box of books in the overhead chamber in the big old house we lived in. I read, and re-read this poem because of what it said about friendship. The more I read the more I understood it, and it became a model for what I felt friendship should be. I love the word and the meaning here of having a disinterested interest. It means you can support your friend, be interested in them, but not live their lives for them.

Best wishes! Pejj