The essence of friendship

A stranger has a name and a shape.  He takes up space when he walks through a door.  I get an impression of him based on his height, weight, even the color of his hair!  If he lingers I may judge him on the way he speaks and the credentials he brings to the platform.  All sorts of things can matter if I am with a stranger.  The clothes he wears, where he went to school, if he went to school!  And in the end, he will walk right on through that door and out of my life, because he is a stranger.

Let someone I love walk through that same door and everything changes.  There is no sense of height or weight, color, or even clothes!  What would have been observations before become feelings now.

I have a sense of warmth, a feeling of gladness.  There is security in the shadow and strength in the presence.  Any anxiety I might have is washed away by the knowledge that all is well because he is here.  He is not a man, or a professor, or a musician.  He is only a loved one with all of the attending feelings.

It’s funny how a stranger is full of details but the beloved is an enveloping fog.  Love makes so many connections that it is impossible to draw an accurate picture.  The best artist in the world could not produce a work of art I would recognize as the beloved.  There could never be enough dimensions to make it worthy.

No memory card has enough room to store all the megabytes necessary to preserve such an amazing creature and do him justice, so I have to rely on my heart.