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Companionship and joy

Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet:

All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes, whereas everything that one is wont to call giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to come close to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling.

I have a lot to write about and very little time to do it right now. Suffice to say that things are suddenly clearer to me than they have been for a long time. I am surrounded by people who love me and care about me and I am relearning how to do the same in return.

Candice, I can’t begin to describe how much I love you… Carrie, you are a wonderful friend… Trevor and Jenny, congratulations on your wedding, you complement each other so well and you are a catalyst for this revelation I find myself in.

I am truly feeling joy and abundance and hope and clarity unlike I have experienced in some time. Not everything is perfect but those imperfections no longer mean inevitable failure to me.

Everything is holy!

Rich

4 responses to “Companionship and joy”

  1. Wonderful post. I’m glad you wrote it (and thanks for the Rilke quote – it speaks to me quite perfectly at the present!).

  3. Letters To A Young Poet is one of the best books I’ve never read.

    Over the course of decades I keep coming across quotations from the book. Every single one of them makes me want to drop everything and start reading it. Unfortunately, I’ve never found it in a book store, and (now) I don’t/can’t do Amazon.

    All I’ll say with regards to the rest of the post is: Good. That’s the way people are supposed to feel. Feeling that way all the time is impossible, but consistently acting as if it were true is eminently achievable. 8^)

  4. gcrumb: Well, that’s easy to fix. (Or at least I think that’s the full text. I can’t tell for sure!) And thanks for your confirmation that I’m on the right track.

    leah: Thanks! And good to see you’re still around here. I hadn’t heard from you for a while!

    Carrie: Yes, :-) !