Old Friends and Soul Friends

'An old friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it to you when you have forgotten the words.'

In my world there are different kinds of ‘old friends.’There are the CLASSICS- a handful of people that I have been bonded with over most of the last 5 decades and we still wander through each other’s lives on a semi-regular basithe MIDWAYS- those I have met while adulting- through work, motherhood, and circumstance…. and have become a part of my daily life for about as many years as I have fingers …and then there are the INSTANTS - those magical beings that briefly brush up against my world …. and make a permanent imprint on my forever-self.Of these three groups, it is the INSTANTS that bolster my faith the most. They may not be people I see or talk to regularly, but their presence in my memory keeps me warm like a patchwork quilt from the Universe; they include a grocery store checker, a mother I met in a hospital hallway, and a 92-year-old dying woman in Brazil. When I meet one of my ‘INSTANTS’- we collide like the ‘big bang’ and even though fate and circumstance don’t offer a road forward - a universe of soul friendship is always left in the wake. Simply being an ‘Old Friend’ does not make one a ‘Soul Friend’ (although I am blessed to have a smattering of women who are both to me.) When it comes to Old Friends, we tend to value time as if it proves something…. ‘I have known her for 30 years’ implies intimate knowledge--- when in truth- what life teaches all of us over and over again… is that despite years of emotional investment and bloodlines, some relationships have built in expiration dates... whereas Soul Friendships have no starting point and no ending point in the here and now…. Because they began and will continue- beyond these lives we muddle through for 80 years give or take a decade or two.Ok, that’s all I had to say today…

A Soul Friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it to you when you have forgotten the words.'