“I learned that a friend may be waiting
behind a stranger’s face.”

 Maya Angelou

It is a good morning when your day starts with a phone call from someone with whom you share the same values, interests, and intentions.

Many of my friendships start with one kind of commitment and often grow into more multi-faceted relationships. My community and support system are a mosh-up of clients, colleagues, peers, former co-workers, school and college buddies, family and adopted family, and individuals whom I have met while traveling, at conferences, and even while standing in front of my favorite bakery. You never know when the next and newest friend is going to walk into your life.

I especially benefit when my day starts or ends with a conversation that sets my head and heart in the right direction.

This morning, the day before a holiday, was no exception. My friends know that I am an early bird – rising early and calling it a day often before the summer sun sets. I also rise energetically. The dog pack and I have a routine and it includes storytelling, singing and dancing, texting, and morning coffee with my neighbor (at a more reasonable hour). I like to get the day started, lists made, put everything in its place, then find my center soaking in the tub before the phone starts to ring. It always does.

An early morning call might interrupt this routine and you might find me choosing to stay comfortably in my ‘COVID comfy clothes’ as a good conversation can replace getting ‘dressed up’ any day of the week in my schedule.

This morning’s call inspired this blog.

I love that my cell phone tells me who is calling. I smile big when I see names of these special friends who know how to ‘talk me out of the trees’ or who don’t roll their eyes when I share some advice or have a complex question.

I talk to think. That is my personality style (if you are familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory). I need to talk things out to make sense of the thoughts, feelings, facts, and lessons. I really appreciate a friend who can listen to what is often a meandering trail of a story.

That happened this morning. A friend, former client, former Board-buddy, learning peer, and great listener texted a ‘Good Morning!’ and then we chatted. He had a purpose for his call and only got to it at the finishing moments of our conversation. As always, our chat ranged over a variety of diverse topics and touchpoints.

I paused to thank him for inspiring an action that I took over the weekend that was not motivated by grief or anger but by clear-headedness and practicality. He was surprised that his optimism had so infected me as to help me to move in a forward direction with grace and without regret.

It was then that I said to him that I had a few friends with whom I share the struggle I have when I am in limbo. William Bridges, author of the very popular book Transitions, describes the phase of limbo as the place after you have made the decision to leave a place, person, situation behind, not unlike sailing away from the shore of something you were attached. Limbo is the time and space when you have not yet arrived at the destination you have envisioned but may be experiencing the uncertainty of not knowing what it will feel like, be like, act like in a new reality. You might have one foot in the past and are not yet fully planted in the new future. This place of limbo can be painful, anxiety-producing, and may cause you not to want to not risk the navigation into a new future. It is only in the repeated lessons from Buddhism that teach me “What you are attached to causes your suffering.” It is with this understanding and faith in myself and different futures that I step again, and again into the uncertainty of limbo space.

It is phone calls like this that pull my thoughts and feelings out; make sense of the reason behind the transition; and reclaim my responsibility and positive intention that each decision — and action — is a reflection of the person whom I aspire to be at all times.

I need the interaction of conversation to pull from me the many things that dance in my mind. I find my way and rediscover my values-compass even when limbo feels like being lost. I just need the chance to talk it out.

My week ended with a conversation with the same friend who called this morning. Weekends can provide me with too much solitary time for conversations that stay and stray in my head. Careful what you might uncork on a Monday morning.

However, I found that I had held onto the inspiration of a friend and used it to chart a good course through a weekend of highs and lows and discovered perspectives. I was given the opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to that friend and share my decisions and actions.

This friend thoughtfully shared that I provided him with the same.

Amazing. I think I just discovered some of the best elements yet, that define friendship.

• A good listener.

• Someone who holds big questions for you to explore.

• Patient in letting the stories diverge.

• Accepting the lessons shared.

• Practical and aspirational.

• Willing to share just as deeply.

• Clear in the boundaries.

• Not afraid to ask for or give help, support, and just care.

• Willing to teach, feel, and even advise.

• Always grateful.

• Open.

• Very human.

• Always forgiving and never judging.

These friends don’t feel responsible for me. They help me find my own navigational inner compass, time and time again, as I quest to leave one place of safety and comfort and reach the next place I am supposed to expand. They know limbo and the feeling of being untethered and aren’t afraid of finding out that their strong friend can take the wrong path or has, yet again, started down the path less taken.

I wish you the same friendships and more as you make you way through this life.

Leslie

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

― Robert Frost