Deep conversations with someone who understands you is everything.
Deep conversations with someone who understands you is everything.
Have you ever tried to have a heart to heart with someone who can barely conceive who you are? There is almost no basis for discussion. You may feel as if you are meeting on a field of interest and enthusiasm, but the lack of mutual overlap really does not allow a conversation of magnitude on that topic to transpire.
When you are with the person with whom you are capable of having these kinds of conversations, the universe opens and your ability to converse and to be truly understood awakens.
In those moments, a freedom deep within lights up and points your conversation in a direction that your heart is aching to have. Your inner soul seeks a chance to be heard and to be non-judged by someone who loves you. This is truly precious territory. It is sacred ground. Having someone in life with whom we feel this degree of relaxed comfort is an extreme luxury in life and when or if we find this relationship, we treasure it with everything we’ve got.
Conversely, there are times when we are the listener for someone who trusts us on this level. Our ability to listen without judgment, comment without emotion, love without condition teaches us to become our greater selves.
In this dynamic, we are truly capable of helping another person to heal in a way that almost no one else in their world may. The relationship of trust is fragile and only exists so long as both parties are willing and capable of delivering on that order of magnitude.
Being a great friend to someone is perhaps one of our most important callings in life. It requires biting our tongue at key moments when we are dying to speak. It requires saying things that must be said in times when they would be so much easier just to be silent. It requires knowing how to give a real hug that comes from the heart. And it requires being able to find genuine, heartfelt joy at the good fortune of another, even when one’s own set of variables in life are not going to one’s full satisfaction.
Those qualities are not easy. They require discipline, self-control, selfless love and true respect for another person even if they are not acting in accord with the way that you feel they should be living their lives. It requires taking all of your judgmental behavior and compartmentalizing it so as to not violate this most sacred of friendships.
When all of these conditions are met, we build a bond of family with that person that many of their blood relatives will never have. There is a very deep level of communication that is never expressed but clearly felt by both parties that carries this friendship into eternity.
Eventually, every friendship of this magnitude is severed. Mostly by death, but sometimes by a transgression of the terms of the friendship. In either case, the mourning is overwhelming and the sadness of having lost something of this value is incalculable.
In life, we are called upon to be many people. Between our personal and our professional selves, we are wearing many hats and operating as many different people. But our commitment to being someone of this magnitude to another friend is unquestionably one of the most important and most treasured people we could ever possibly become.
When you sense that someone is trying to connect with you on this level, even if it is not the perfect scenario, it usually means they need someone of your magnitude to just listen. Sometimes the things you have to listen to are not pleasant and give you pause for real concern. Perhaps it is incumbent upon us to grow into a higher level human being through our ability to transform into such a person and perform the gracious act of listening and caring for someone who really needs us. Happy Monday!
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