Perfectly imperfect...

I haven't written in a while. It's not that the words haven't been coming or a lack of inspiration... to be honest I'm not 100% sure what's been holding me back from posting. Other than a simple fear that whatever I write is not good enough. I'm a self confessed perfectionist, I want every thing that I do to be the best it can possibly be. Often this drive for perfection holds captive from ever doing anything to completion. I start something with this idea of what it should be and then at some point along the way to completion I realise that it is not going to be what I imagined. So I quit, I leave the imperfect project in the closet gathering dust. Yet another failure.

The same with my writing. I want everything I write to be deep and insightful. I have this silly dream of the simple words that I write somehow magically finding someone at the right time and moving of the page (or computer screen ) and floating through the air to land somewhere near your heart at the time that you most need them. The reality is that I have hundreds of files filled with uncompleted blog posts, articles, stories and book ideas sitting on my hard-drive gathering computer dust (or whatever it is that they gather). Incomplete, imperfect, forgotten moments of life's inspiration I wished to share.

This year for me has been a struggle on a personal lever possibly more than any year to date. The self imposed expectations at times more often than not have frozen my feet to the ground in fear of doing something wrong. This being grounded in fear is uncomfortable and in all reality depressing, it's like not being able to tell if you are happy or sad. This weird limbo where everything is in front of you but the choice is... I like the way Sylvia Plath put it in her book The Bell Jar

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

Perhaps perfection isn't the point of life, maybe aiming for perfection with my writing is a lofty unobtainable goal, there is the very real chance that even with everything that I write nothing I ever write will touch people. The thing that I am  slowly and painfully coming to realise is this... Life is not perfect and I am not, nor will I ever be perfect. So rather than beating myself up about the imperfections, my faults, stumbling blocks and living my life looking down and backward. Maybe my life should simply be about looking up and forward, and moving in that direction. Living fully, loving unconditionally and growing completely, with a full heart. Simply and imperfectly chasing the one who is.

A world without hate...

“Hatred is like a long, dark shadow. Not even the person it falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. It is like a two-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you cut yourself. The more violently you hack at the other person, the more violently you hack at yourself. It can often be fatal. But it is not easy to dispose of.” - Haruki Murakami

Most hatred is based on fear, one way or another. It's often hard to detect behind the pain and wall of hatred but it's almost always there; like a warm woolly cardigan under a black leather jacket on a winters day. Warm, safe, comfortable and unseen. I suppose that's one of the reasons why people tend to cling to their hates so stubbornly, they sense that once the hate is gone they will be forced to deal with the pain and fears that may have never seen the light of day.

And so many of us find solace in the familiarity of our pain as it justifies our fears and our hates as they protect us from the vulnerability of getting hurt. But just for a moment imagine a world without hate, without pain and the fear behind it all. What would it look like? A world with vulnerability and an infinite for people to love.

“As long as you hate, there will be people to hate.” - George Harrison

The other side of darkness...

I recently had an incredibly personal article published. An article that took me two years to start and over two months to finish. It wasn't something I really planed to do although the thought had crossed my mind to share my story, the idea had never stayed long enough or with enough conviction for me to ever start writing anything. While I'd always thought it was a story and perspective that needed sharing I had never been willing to put myself out there; to make myself vulnerable and be the one to say what needed to be said.

As writer and researcher Brene Brown once said “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

Her words resonate some place deep within in a space where there are no words. The truth is writing honestly was an incredibly uncomfortable process but also an incredibly healing one. It involved reliving many of my most painful memories and making myself incredibly vulnerable; something I tend to avoid. But it was a process that lead me to the realisation that until I, until we are willing to open ourselves up, to let our invulnerability's be seen and share the darkness we have faced we will never fully come to terms with our past and discover the light and healing that is just on the other side of darkness. A light that we have come to know though and because of our pain.

“What happens when people open their hearts?"...
"They get better.”

Haruki Marakami

Failing Forward...

“In life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with your problems. If the possibility of failure were erased, what would you attempt to achieve?

The essence of man is imperfection. Know that you're going to make mistakes. The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does. Wake up and realize this: Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success.

Achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that, they persevere. The average for entrepreneurs is 3.8 failures before they finally make it in business.

When achievers fail, they see it as a momentary event, not a lifelong epidemic.

Procrastination is too high a price to pay for fear of failure. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway. Forget motivation. Just do it. Act your way into feeling, not wait for positive emotions to carry you forward.

Recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience.

Life is playing a poor hand well. The greatest battle you wage against failure occurs on the inside, not the outside.

Why worry about things you can't control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?

Handicaps can only disable us if we let them. If you are continually experiencing trouble or facing obstacles, then you should check to make sure that you are not the problem.

Be more concerned with what you can give rather than what you can get because giving truly is the highest level of living.

Embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward.

Everything in life brings risk. It's true that you risk failure if you try something bold because you might miss it. But you also risk failure if you stand still and don't try anything new.

The less you venture out, the greater your risk of failure. Ironically the more you risk failure — and actually fail — the greater your chances of success.

If you are succeeding in everything you do, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. And that means you're not taking enough risks. You risk because you have something of value you want to achieve.

The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get.

Determining what went wrong in a situation has value. But taking that analysis another step and figuring out how to use it to your benefit is the real difference maker when it comes to failing forward. Don't let your learning lead to knowledge; let your learning lead to action.

The last time you failed, did you stop trying because you failed, or did you fail because you stopped trying?

Commitment makes you capable of failing forward until you reach your goals. Cutting corners is really a sign of impatience and poor self-discipline.

Successful people have learned to do what does not come naturally. Nothing worth achieving comes easily. The only way to fail forward and achieve your dreams is to cultivate tenacity and persistence.

Never say die. Never be satisfied. Be stubborn. Be persistent. Integrity is a must. Anything worth having is worth striving for with all your might.

If we look long enough for what we want in life we are almost sure to find it. Success is in the journey, the continual process. And no matter how hard you work, you will not create the perfect plan or execute it without error. You will never get to the point that you no longer make mistakes, that you no longer fail.

The next time you find yourself envying what successful people have achieved, recognize that they have probably gone through many negative experiences that you cannot see on the surface.

Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.” 

John Maxwell, Failing Forward

Every Broken Heart...

 

Someone once said that for every scar there is a story of survival. And they were right. The stories written on scars are never pretty, they can be heartbreaking, incredibly hard to read and even harder to tell. But along the lines of every scar there is a story of survival, a story of grace, a story of overcoming, a story of hope and of life. Many people never tell their stories, for reasons most us are unable to comprehend. But for those few who let their heartbreak stories be told, they often find that in the telling, in the sharing of their story there is healing. Healing not only for themselves but for those with whom they share.

It has often been said that the most powerful ministry is simply sharing two story's, your story and the story of the one that saved you. Is it possible that the story of us at our weakest is the story of Him at his best? Is it possible that our worst scars can showcase His healing? Is it possible that every broken heart is a glowing light? Is it possible that through honesty, through sharing our scar written stories we can find our purpose, our greatest ministry, a journey of peace and healing not only for ourselves but also to those who are now where we once were?

"But every broken heart is a glowing light
He will find it out in the darkness
Every lonely song is a brilliant sound
He will hear it out from a distance"
Sky Circles, Falling Up

The beginning…

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There is always a beginning, a starting point. Literally everything has one, even a day starts in a moment. There’s always a first breath, a blossom, a scream, a thought, a look, a word, a touch, a kiss, a single spark and a point of origin. Whether Christian, Atheist or Agnostic all agree that there is a beginning. All we argue over are technicalities.

What happens when the sun descends beneath the horizon and what happens when we taste our last breath? Our beliefs shape our answers to these technicalities and our answers to these technicalities shape our lives. There is a beginning to everything, even the end. As for the answers to the technicalities of the beginning. To believe in a God, chance or a chemical reaction; it’s entirely up to us. I choose to believe that it all began with God. I believe that “In the beginning there was God…”

“With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.” C. S. Lewis

Life illuminated...

 

Author and artist Henry Miller once wrote “Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated.”

The idea of real love can often times bring out the romantics and cynics in force. The romantics argue that true and 'real love' exists, that it lasts if only you find the right one/ones. The cynics (myself usually included) lean towards the argument that the whole idea of 'real love' is just a grown-up version of Santa Clause; a myth we've been fed since childhood to keep us buying magazines, joining clubs, and doing therapy.

Then there are those who argue that we have the ideal all wrong. In her book All About Love, Bell Hooks quotes Erich Fromm “To love somebody is not just a strong feeling – it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If lover were only a feeling there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go.”

She goes on herself to write “How different things might be if, rather than saying, 'I think I'm in love,' we were saying, 'I've connected with someone in a way that makes me think I'm on they way to knowing love,' Or if instead of saying 'I am in love' we were saying 'I am loving or 'I will love.”

The argument of 'real love' is one of those things like grace; we will never fully get it. As much as the cynic knows we will never attain it in perfection, something in us continues (despite all opposition) to believe that life is better with it. Life is better when we are striving to accept and give it more fully, even if our all attempts are watered down reflections of the ideal. 

And maybe just maybe there is a 'real love' that is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects and never demands. A love that replenishes, by grace going on and on. A love that burns, because it knows sacrifice. Maybe there is a love that is life illuminating if we choose to search for, accept and offer it.

Christmas...

It's the crazy season. The season of stress, of overfilled malls, and maxed out credit cards; of fat men in red suits, of Christmas trees and a few seriously overplayed songs. It's also the time when people smile in the street, your grocery checkout lady looks you in the eye and for a few short weeks people's worlds appear to expand before rapidly shrinking back down to size in time for the boxing day sales.

Before you go and call me the Grinch I need to say that I love Christmas. It's the season of traditions and love; of looking past yourself and finding joy in giving it to others. The reason for my mixed feelings is knowing that even with all the good going around at this time of year tomorrow someone will still be lonely and the world will still be falling apart. The death's and births, joy and heartache associated with living will all be there. And for the majority the only hope this world has, the only hope this worlds needs will be standing in their front yard, wrapped up in Christmas lights hoping that one day we will notice.

i am more

i am more than painted lips in a dress,

i am words and thoughts, secrets and dreams.

i am more than images on a screen,

i am body and soul, spirit and breath.

i am more than face and weight and skin,

i am heart and mind, passion and lungs.

i am more,

i am more,

i am me.

Author The Dust Dances Too 

Balancing questions...

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A lot of my life is spent trying to strike a balance and missing.

I want to do and be so much. And I want to be good at it. I want to truly love and be loved. I want to be a good friend, daughter, granddaughter, sister, cousin, niece. I want to be a star student, an indispensable employee. I want to write something wonderful. I want to be intelligent, educated and informed; I want to travel the world, read all the books, newspapers, magazines and journals I can. I want to be healthy, fit and pretty. I want my home to be cozy and beautiful. I want to take photos, cook delicious meals, go to parties, have meaningful conversations, watch films, climb mountains, walk though galleries and gardens. I want to listen to talented musicians, surf waves, learn to dance and play guitar. I want to have a golden tan, flawless skin, perfect hair and stylish clothes. I want to impress people with my political insight, my emotional intelligence, my progressive ideas. I want to help those in need. I want to find my kindred spirits and let no one ever leave without making them feel better and happier and do my bit to make the world a better place.

I simply don't know how to do it; how to strike a balance I feel is missing and I'm wondering is there enough room in my life for me to be and have all of those things or does something have to give? And If something has to give; what is it that I am willing to sacrifice?

The stories telling...

The story alone is not the answer. For the answer itself lies hidden in the telling. Like words written on forgotten diary pages or lyrics lost in the melody. Pictures; words painted with emotion, so vivid they reach inside, grasping at some deeply held thread hidden for fear of daylight. A persons search for answers cannot end in another life's telling, among dusted pages and lyrics score. Your life's meaning can only be found in the mystery, your questions in search of the answers. Answers only to be found in your stories telling. The story alone is not the answer. For the answer itself lies hidden in the telling.

“Writers cannot provide The Answers, but we can bring a lot of other things to the table. Reaching inside and drawing out truth, from our own experiences: deep-seated shame, broken-heartedness, soaring love, secret longing. And then we can share the things we have done that have made us feel better, given us some comfort, sprinkled our lives with a little sweetness.

Better yet, we can concentrate upon telling the tales of what comes before the resolution. The sadness before the happiness, the storm before the calm, the shame before the self-acceptance. Because it's in the confusion, the fear and the failure that we are all united, and where the truth is momentarily revealed. Sometimes it's enough just to know that there are others exactly like us, feeling exactly what we are feeling. Often, answers masqueraded as The Answers just make us feel more flawed, and alone.

A story that leaves us hanging is one that leaves us thinking. Wondering, ruminating, looking to piece together the puzzle for ourselves. That's just how life goes; the mystery is never truly solved, the story never truly ends.”

Laura Valerie

Doubt of today...

Sometimes I wonder if there is any meaning to anything. I wonder if faith is real or just some cruel ruse played on small minds. I wonder if I'm where I'm supposed to be. I wonder if my dreams are my own. I wonder if sanity exists. I wonder if I am of worth. More than anything I wonder if any of it's real... God, life, purpose.

Sometimes the only step I can take is the one directly in front of me. The only way forward is to deal with the past. The only way to really dream is to let go of the expectations. And the only way to live is to hope that one day there will be a clear horizon beyond the doubt of today.

"Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we are in fact in the process of change... Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening...”. Alice Walker

Forever? Even longer...

Family without blood ties. People you trust with everything and no matter what happens, where you go, live or how much time passes between conversations. They are still your family. They've seen your best and worst; clutzy moments, morning hair, language blunders and 3am phone calls.

But oh the laughter, the memories this family holds. Like a silk thread of hope on a dewy morning. Beautiful beyond description. It's the best and worst the acceptance that life will happen, you may never all be around one table again. But the beauty of the time you had outweighs the sadness of the realization, the moment's passed from a vivid reality to a whisper in a daydream.

“We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet.
Even longer,' Pooh answered.”

A.A. Milne, Winnie the pooh

What we leave behind...

When a writer dies they become books, photographers continue on through their photos and artists, their artwork. But what of the rest of us? Those of us who have no books to their names or gallery displays. What is it we leave behind?

As everything has a beginning, so too must everything have an end; life is no exception. It is gift, so often taken for granted until the death of someone remands us of it's fragility and value.

This week; a boy I know committed suicide (one of my VFS kids). I don't know how to describe the emptiness that settled in the pit of my stomach on hearing the news or the internal battle as my brain struggles to comprehend the reality; he's gone.

My heart breaks for a life lost; for unfulfilled potential, for loss of his caring spirit, his mind, his talent, his passion and for for memories of a time gone by.

What went through his mind in those last moments I may never know. Could I have done something? Said something? We weren’t each other’s closest friends. But he touched me, during his short life. Maybe I touched him, too. I’ll never know. All I know is what he's left behind.

“Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived.” Picard, Star Trek

Quiet love...

“Love fascinates me. It defies logic, spans cultures, transgresses moral, political, social, economic, racial and ethnic boundaries. Love is all-powerful and all-encompassing. I don't think I am a romantic for saying so. History shows that love emerges from the most horrific of situations. It makes good people do bad things and bad people do good things. Love is everything.

Yet despite its universality, love is surprisingly hard to pin down. And trickily, the harder you look for it, the harder it is to find.

My observations have led me to discover my favorite kind of love. It's the quiet kind. The bragging, over-compensating, facades and performances don't enter the picture. What takes my breath away is catching the inconspicuous lovers in a tender moment, when they think nobody is looking. He tucks her hair behind her ear, she strokes his cheek with the back of her hand. They lock eyes across the room. It's beautiful, because it's real. And it's heartening.” Laura Valerie

Know thyself...

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The ancient Greek aphorism 'γνῶθι σεαυτόν' roughly translated as 'Know Thyself' has had many different meanings throughout literature. The Suda (a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world) says: “the proverb is applied to those whose boasts exceed what they are, and that know thyself is a warning to pay no attention to the opinion of the multitude”.

In Plato's Philebus, Socrates said that people make themselves appear ridiculous when they are trying to know obscure things before they know themselves. Later Benjamin Franklin observed the great difficulty of knowing one's self by saying “there are three things extremely hard, steel, a diamond and to know one's self.” More recently (or not so recently) the Latin of know thyself: 'temet nosce' was inscribed over the Oracle's door in the Matrix.

"Know thyself" the interpretations are endless yet we obsess over it . It is the basis of the majority of self-help, the aim and basis of many religions; its the sign of being a mature adult. But how do you 'know thyself'? What does that really look like 'knowing thyself'? Is it all about introspection and self reflection or is knowing 'thyself' not about us at all? Abraham Joshua Herschel once said “Know thy God rather than know thyself... there is no self-understanding with out God-understanding.” 

 

In my search to know/understand myself I have to admit that I get slightly confused, lost and bewildered at times. Like Anne from L.M. Montgomery's Anne of the Isle I think I know myself then, myself changes and I have to get acquainted all over again. Is it growing pains or is the quest to 'Know thyself' akin to chasing a rainbows end?

 

“I do know my own mind,' ... 'The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.” L.M. Montgomery

Yesterday...

Yesterday, how much time and energy do we spend wishing things were how they were? Wishing that we could go back, pause time, make it last that little bit longer. But life isn't static, is it?

“It ebbs and it flows and people grow up and move away and graduate and lose their jobs and people that you love die and some people get married and others don't and some get divorced and some get cancer and things aren't how they were... If you need to celebrate how good it was then celebrate, if you need to remember how great it was when they were alive, then remember that. And if you need to grieve, grieve. If you need to apologize or make amends or you need to do something to make peace with how it was then do it, but then move on.”

Take the memories and look forward because honestly there is a certain kind of desperate, despair that sets in when you believe that things were better back then. Because when you’re stuck back there you can never be fully present here, now, today.

We don't have a guarantee about tomorrow and we can’t ever go back, all we have is today. Some of us live in the fantasy that we’ll get around to it tomorrow, that we’ll get around to them tomorrow. The danger is that we will wake up, and it will not be tomorrow, it will be yesterday and we will have missed it, you will have missed them... we will have missed life. Today.

* This was written after watching Nooma, Today by Rob Bell.

Stories...

Be it of privilege, of poverty, of justice prevailing or not; every being has a story. The first time I saw the above picture I was haunted by it's poignancy, but unable to write about it. Too often it's tempting to travel though life with our eyes firmly closed to the stories people around us may have to tell. We often don't want to be witness to the intricacies of their lives; we don't want clarity or intimate knowledge of where and whom they went home to at night, their joy and their sorrow, their love or their heartache. Because once you know it their lives can become a part of our story.

It's tempting to hide at home reading Alice Pung because she's safe. Her stories of poverty, struggle and oppression, are beautifully written and bound together in book's with a guaranteed happy ending. Stories of triumph, leaving you with the comforting impression that there is a sense of justice to this world. 

But as Milan Kundera once wrote that “... there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”

On opening my eyes I find that my difficulty is not compassion; the telling of or becoming involved in a story, that is the easy part. My difficulty is walking away; choosing whose story to tell and whose battle to fight. I struggle keeping quiet, letting go and acknowledging that the world is at times is cruel and unfair and as much as I wish I could find a way to fix everything and everyone's pain, communicate every untold story to the world... I can't.

There will always be countless stories, retold and forgotten in equal measure; I am coming to believe that while I can't fix the world's problems or pay tribute to every story, I can go through life dedicated to keeping my eye's open to the stories of those around me. I can pray for the wisdom to know what stories I am called to tell, what battles I am called to fight and when I'm called to simply let go.

“The planet does not need more ‘successful people’. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds. It needs people to live well in their places. It needs people with moral courage willing to join the struggle to make the world habitable and humane and these qualities have little to do with success as our culture is the set.”

— Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama

Empty my hands...

Career... How much the thought fills my head with a fruit salad of emotion. All through university I couldn’t wait to get out and into the “real world”, start a successful career, make money and prove to everyone who said I couldn’t, that I can. Now, after taking almost two years off I’m here at the beginning trying to find the right place to start, searching for direction and a dream, feeling lost and oh so vulnerable. What if no one hires me? What if I make a wrong choice? What then?

For so long I’ve wanted to be successful in order to prove my worth and while I’ll openly admit that I still want to be successful, my definition of success is changing. Success is not so much about the amount of money I earn or working for the prestigious companies anymore. Success for me is becoming more and more about personal happiness and my ability to contribute positively to the lives of others. I’m coming to the realization that I would rather have an average job I love, a job where I feel valued and supported than killing myself doing something I don’t like, to prove myself to people who don’t care about me.

  “Well, it all comes to this; there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is to   live in your own. After all, I believe in myself. I'm not so bad and silly as they think me..." L.M. Montgomery

“I let these dreams die, If I lay down all my wounded pride, If I let these dreams die, Will I find that letting go lets me come alive...”  Empty my hands, Tenth Avenue North

Kindred spirits...

I’ve always been looking to find kindred spirits to share my life with ever since reading Anne of Green Gables as a 14 year old. But I have to admit that eventhough I'm always looking to find kindred spirits I have this nagging fear of what if. What if my kindred spirits... don't like me? What if, because of my flaws - my shyness, self-consciousness, uninteresting-ness - a potentially wonderful friendship falls flat on the floor?

Sometimes that fear can be personified in me trying-too-hard. Unfortunately my trying often presents a wall; a certain coldness, a front that stalls a real, foundation upon which to build a genuine, heartfelt, rewarding friendship.

I recently read a quote by photographer Cecil Beaton, recalling his first meeting with Audrey Hepburn 1954:

“...without any of the preliminaries I felt that she cut through to a basic understanding that makes people friends. Nothing had to be explained: we liked one another. A chord had been stuck and I knew that, next time we met, we would continue straight from here with no recapitulation of formalities. This was a unique occasion.”

Cecil reminded me that a blossoming friendship is not dependent upon making oneself seem attractive to others. It is about being warm and accepting, and welcoming those who cross our paths with open arms. Shedding layers, rather than donning them. Because it's the not trying - the effortlessness - that really makes some friendship's unique.

"Your heart and my heart

are very, very old friends."

— Hafiz