What’s Important?

I have a friend who is in the hospital right now getting treatment for cancer. The cancer has recently moved into his brain. He’s been having a tough time speaking and writing. Things have been getting muddled and blurred together; but he is so very courageous. As long as I’ve known him he has been courageous. He has never seemed to me to get stuck in pretense. He is who he is. He is not one to seek approval or to hide. He is true to himself, which is risky. It can knock you down sometimes. He is open…and he is vulnerable in a way that I would also like to be. He is a teacher for me. And the result is that many have gathered around him who love him for exactly who he is. 

As I sat down to write this afternoon, I asked myself a question: “What’s important to me today?” 

This is. He is. His beautiful heart and this whole crazy human experience is. Love is. 

There are those who say there is no such thing as love. There are those who say we make it up. We dream it. I have been told that we are desperately painting love onto a canvas of black emptiness in order to feel better. 

Maybe it’s all true. How do I really know? If it is, I still wouldn’t miss the experience for anything. Let it be. The miracle is that there can be love at all, simply because we say so. There can be love because it’s felt…it moves us. There can be love because this strange dream brings it to us in full living color. It catches our breath. We are somehow held by it. 

Love is the greater context, as best I can tell, in which everything, everything, everything is constantly happening. It’s not just the things we call “good” or “happy” or “kind” or “just”. The whole confusing, beautiful mess is love…somehow. 

Somehow. 

The things that hurt are love. The things that break our hearts are love. What a kick in the head, right? Because that means there is a place of forgiving everything. We balk at that. I have certainly balked at that, myself. It can’t all be okay. That’s much too chaotic an idea. It feels like anarchy. It feels dangerous. 

You know what it feels like? It feels like loss of control. 

Look around you, though. Look at your life. Look at your own journey and the ways you’ve gotten stronger. Look at the ways you know how to be tender or strong or generous or brave because you know what it’s like to struggle. 

I’m saying I call that love. Love did that. 

So, today…this is my little love note to my buddy.