Friendship

This was in my inbox this morning from wellforjourney.org:

"Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words but pouring all out just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away."

George Eliot

It reminded me of a friend sharing that he was OCD and had been taking medicine for years. He shared that the medicine saved his life from hours of checking and rechecking, organizing and reorganizing, studying and more studying, sleepless nights and agonizing days.

I was grateful he shared because he wanted to, but he's the same fun, neat guy I always thought he was.

Sifting...

Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858

"Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead."
- Chinese Proverb, (sent by Julio Fung)

LOVE that JJ..."splat!"

Heres one I like and have tried to live by:

Do not go where the path may lead,
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

More like splat and....roll.

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”

C S Lewis

I love it! What a picture. What a saying. Ededweiss3 you make me
laugh. And I love to laugh.

And I agree that tact and courtesy are most important in any
relationship. But every relationship requires doing away with
a little chaff!

jj,
That Julio Fung and the hatchet is a trip. Woops, better duck!
Somebody is liable to get decapitated 'round here.

Edelweiss3,
Angels aren't always angels. R they Edelweiss?