This weekend I got the rare joy of visiting my friends Andrew and Katherine. I was reminded (as I often am) how difficult it is to have only a couple of precious days to visit with old friends. There's so much you want to say and do, and it all has to be compacted and condensed. Suddenly every moment feels valuable, every word is important. We talked about the nature of our lives right now and how fast things keep changing....how they had been married almost a year with a baby on the way, Paul and Megan are getting married in a little over a month, everyone graduating, me going to Scotland. I couldn't help admitting it all made me sad, remembering how often I struggle to let people go and be willing to form new friendships. Paul reminded me that you can't place a value on a friendship based on the length of time it lasts....and sometimes it's unnatural to prolong a friendship that was only meant to last for a season.
Andrew then read us this passage from C.S. Lewis, which is so beautifully fitting to many of my struggles in allowing friendships to transition:
"In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and become a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.
This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go — let it die away — go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow — and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. it is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy."
I find myself so often running after the former thrill, so often unwilling to unclench my fist and release all the people and places and things to which I cling. I want to be willing to let things die and bloom again in a new way, to venture off the old roads and seek new horizons.
We had a big celebration at my friend Sarah's house tonight, with good food, games, laughter, and so many people I love. And suddenly, my friends Sam and Gina start talking about packing up their apartments....and then I realize they're leaving us. On Friday--this Friday. Leaving so they can get married the next Friday. In the midst of our happy party, I started to get that "fists clinched" feeling again, not wanting to let them go, fighting back tears as I thought about only having the next few days with them before I see them walking down the aisle.
I have to remind myself that the process of change isn't just these years of college or these months of graduation and weddings....it's just life, and it doesn't stop. So I want to savor these next few days by slowly letting go and treasuring the thrills of deep friendships that will linger in so many quiet, enduring ways.
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currently listening to: "We Were So Sure We Would Change The World," by Andrew Osenga (look it up, seriously) and "Spiegel im Spiegel" by Arvo Part (check that one out, too)
