When you find yourself at a point where you have to part ways with an environment that is comforting, caring and supportive and must leave people who have showered you with love, it really is a herculean effort to let go....one that I am having to exert even as I type these words.
Separation from people who are important to me, has always been a difficult task. When I left home, 10 days ago, to come to Bangalore, I felt not only the thrill of meeting my friends here, but also the small pangs of leaving my family for the duration of my vacation. "Home is where the heart is", they say...for me, home is even more; it is a shrine of love and nurturance, a centre of energy where one may recuperate from any troubles that befall him/her. It is not surprising therefore, that now, when it is time to return to my family, I feel the excitement of meeting my parents and sister once again, but also feel a stab of pain when I think of leaving my friends in Bangalore, in whose presence, I felt a comfort exactly like the one I feel in my family. How quickly the heart forges bonds!
It occurs to me, at this point, that almost every successful relationship, must involve friendship in order to be positive and enriching. Even in our relationships with our family members, if we cannot love them as friends, we cannot love them as family. We must be able to love each other in the unconditional manner of true friendship before we can love each other as more than friends. When friendship is carried into relationships of a more personal nature, such as marriage, it enriches those relationships immeasurably. I'm incredibly grateful for the fact that I can speak to my parents as I would speak to my friends and can share jokes and experiences with them in much the same way.
Friendship and the other relationships that it accentuates, must never be taken for granted, although it is very difficult to avoid this as one becomes increasingly comfortable with a loved person. Sometimes we might find that we take for granted the ones who are most important and close to us. In these situations, we may often neglect the small, seemingly inconsequential little gestures that make our relationships infinitely meaningful. We may forget to express our appreciation for the small but important things that others do for us routinely or even neglect to think that expressing such appreciation is important. This happens almost inevitably in all relationships...what is important for us is to be able to pinch ourselves every now and then and rejuvenate our bonds with the people we love, not necessarily with something stupendous, but with the little surprises and tokens of affection that speak volumes even if they are as fleeting as a smile.
Let me end by quoting a few lines from a beautiful poem - one of my favourites - from e.e. cummings ("I Carry your Heart With Me), who has expressed, with surpassing elegance, the way in which no force on earth can sunder people who are bound by unconditional love for one another:
"here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)"
God Bless!
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