The Brick

Friendship and Love

Friendship: the state of being attached to another by affection or esteem; a favored companion.

Love : strong affection another; affection based on admiration, benevolence or common interests; warm attachment, enthusiasm or devotion, and unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another .

Can love survive without friendship? Can friendship live without love? Both are a part of the same coin. Relationships, specially the ones between lovers/spouses die not because of death of love but because of disappearance of friendship. When affection vaporizes, the heart is but an organ. And organs do not have the capacity to feel anything, leave aside the warmth of love.

Of course the love for your friend will be quite different from the love for your lover, but its all a matter of degrees. Perhaps here in the second case, comes the element of physical attraction to begin with but in the end just this factor alone cannot make love survive. Our everyday existence is overflowing with instances of this. Man is a feeling animal. He is a spiritual being. He thrives on emotional attachment. That’s why two machines cant stay forever together. They detach.

Before being a lover, be a friend. Before being a spouse be a friend. Before falling in love, rise in friendship. Love might make the world go around; but Friendship will make love come full circle as if each moment with him/her is like the first “hello”!

lopamudra

What's In A Name?

The first rays of the morning sun kisses my face, making me bask in its warmth and light, filling me with a deep sense of bliss and I wake up with a jolt from my sleep. What must I give in return? Can I?

The moment this thought pops up in my mind I think of the mechanism, named relations, that is existing since times immemorial. Relations. Life is a river of relations - moving faces of people around you. They happen to you for a certain reason. The reason can be as simple as giving you company when you are in need of silence! When one starts discussing about this otherwise taken-for-granted mechanism of existence, one instantly returns to the relations, past and present in one's life. But must all relationships have names? What was your relationship with that lonely figure watching you from a distance when you returned from school? What was your relationship with that stealing glance and lowered eyes when she pretended to ignore you? What was your relationship with that stranger in the street who helped you in times of trouble? What was your relationship with that baby in his mother's lap, who just gave a toothless smile with twinkling eyes and stole your heart away? Can you give a name to such relations? Perhaps not! Do they make you sad? Never!

As time grows, so does the nature and depth of relations. Some painful, some blissful - but they are all there. As maturity overwhelms the child in us, we come to understand some relations are just there - no beginning traced, no questions asked, no expectations expressed, no meaning unearthed! Its just there - just like the rays of the sun touching the earth and spreading its warmth and light. The moment you try to dissect its existence, limitations and boundaries crop up, expectations arise, additions and subtractions are calculated, blame game begins and the relationship starts to groan under the pressure of too many explanations!

So, some relations are better left pure - untouched by our bottled, worldly thinking pattern. The rose does not think about where to its fragrance will travel, while blooming; the apple tree does not think about who will eat its fruit when it is ripe and neither does the rain think about what it is worthy of giving when it rushes down to meet the earth! And we the earthlings know the riches we reap because of their unawareness in giving unconditionally. I wish, sometimes, so be it with us, to realize the beauty of a spiritual bond! No wonder Rumi once penned, " Beyond what is right and wrong there is a whole existence. Lets find each other there."

Pamira

Affinity

Man would not be man without affinity. Every animal has affinity to some degree, but man is capable of feeling an especially large amount.

You can have a feeling of affinity for objects: "I love the way the grain stands out in that wood." There is a feeling of oneness with the earth, blue skies, rain, millponds, cartwheels and bullfrogs which is affinity.

Affinity is never identification (becoming one with another in feeling or interest) nor does it go quite far as empathy ( the power or state of imagining oneself to be another person and even share his ideas or feelings). You remain very much yourself when you have affinity for something but you also feel the essence of the thing for which you have affinity. You remain yourself and yet you draw closer to the object for which you have affinity. It is not a binding quality. There are no strings attached when affinity is given. To the receiver it carries no duties and no reponsibilities.

It is pure, easy and natural and flows out from the individual as easily as sunlight flows from the sun. Affinity begets affinity. A person who is filled with the quality will automatically find people anywhere near him also beginning to be filled with affinity. It is a calming, warming, heartening influence on all who are capable of receiving and giving it.

---- L.RON HUBBARD