My friend felt un-important yesterday. It was one of those days that she just felt, overlooked, dismissed, and invisible. I felt sad because she was sad. She wanted to feel like she mattered. She wanted to feel like she was important and needed. But she didn't. She felt invisible and extra, one more great cog in the wheel of blah.
I wanted to tell her that she was important. I wanted to remind her how much she does for everyone. I wanted to say that she was important and essential. I think, maybe we think that is a shortcut for being loved. I wanted her to know that she is loved.
But maybe there is something better than being important. Maybe being needed is not the way to find a place either. In a hundred years, few people will even remember me. How important could I possibly be? Maybe the very greatest joy of life is not people loving us because they need us but because they choose to.
My friend helps me out a lot these days. When I am shaking and throwing up she drives my kids to school. She feeds me on bad days. She fixes things that break. I appreciate her. I am grateful for the help. Some days are so hard, I cannot imagine how I would do it with the help I receive from so many.
But that isn't why I love her. I love her because she is the only grown up I know that laughs from her toes. She doubles over and her cheeks turn hot pink, and she laughs and waves her hand in the air because she is laughing too hard to breathe. That's awesome. I love her because she is very smart and very silly. She loves Jane Austen and Joy from "My name is Earl". She wears endless whimsical bracelets and thinks equations mean something. And she has single handily brought back florals with a evangelical zealousness not seen outside of English Manor houses. She wonders and she learns. She knows all the newest technology and giggles over vintage wedding dresses.
If I have to be affiliated with other human beings, I think I want the ones I choose because they laugh like a seizure and get excited about life. I need a friend to talk to but I would rather choose the one that bought 15 cubic yards of manure and then worried about it being stolen in the night than just someone I needed. I need someone to help me watch over my children but I chose for it to be my too smart friend as she regales me with tales of qualitative research.
I don't know how important any of us ever really are. But maybe the coolest thing is to not be important for any reason other than who you are and the way you laugh and the way you see the world.
Important is OK if you want to settle for that. But I think chosen is better.
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3 comments:
You got me at hand-waving...yes. Amen. Thank you. And about the florals...and yeah. Yes. Love is it.
I agree with Ang, and I would add that loving is more important than being loved--although the first is frequently followed by the second. Looking outward to love helps us look upward to know how--and when we do that, we realize our significance in the vastness.
Being important? Being chosen? We are all both. But on those bad days when can't see even a drop of that reality through the tears, it's wonderful to have friends that can. Florals, charm bracelets, and dogs with giggly names hint at her interior essence.
Important and chosen. She's all that and more...but that "more" is another lengthy discussion.
Thanks everyone!!!
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