We drive about an hour to get to our family
dentist, so when one of us has an appointment, the drive gives us isolated time
to talk about things we’d ordinarily not talk about. On this occasion we were talking about
meeting a fellow the other day who worked at our favorite Whole Foods Grocery
store. We had asked him when would they have
our favorite yogurt restocked? In telling us when we could expect them, we
could tell he had a thick accent.
Whenever that occurs one of us usually asks
“Where
are you from?”
His
reply was “Europe.”
Montse prodder further, “Where?”
He
told us Bulgaria, as Montse told him she was from Spain. Then she asked him if he missed home. He replied,
“Yes,
but not for what most people think.”
If
ever opportunity was blinking its bright light on and off for this writer it
was right then. So I asked,
“OK,
what do you miss?”
He spoke of not
liking the fact that he steps out of his door into a community of strangers; where
he doesn’t even see who is neighbors are.
He mentioned having to drive to everyplace and the absence of close
friends. The reasons were, in fact, the very
reasons Montse and I continue to cultivate the idea of moving back to
Spain. She has a close knit family. They
bother to make it a point to visit one another, even when they all don’t live
in her home town. They talk; not so much
about national issues and concerns, although those are visited, but they get
into the lives of one another. Many people
I know who come from small towns leave those home towns because of familiarity
being so intrusive.
Yet for most it seems, we starve for the
feeling of being important to someone beyond the small family circle; even in
that small circle, is the concern born more of a cooperation and coordination
of daily maintenance task.
When
I mentioned our conversation with the Bulgarian at the market, and what we
learned by it, with my dental assistant, as she prepped me for a new crown (not
king type), she told me that I had just talked more with her just now than her
husband had all week. We laughed of
course, but agreed that what Montse and I had observed was the truth of
it. We trim down our involvement to
functions of maintenance and don’t use the time together to explore the changes
that are affecting each and every one of us.
I’ll admit it’s hard to even see that we’re getting lazy in our
relationships. Mostly I lay that on the
Alter of ambition. We’re taught to go
out and get what you want way before we ever even hear a whisper on what’s
worth having. We take so much for
granted that we lose connection with how things become valuable. So then the only course left open to us is
one of comparison when we’ve lost our precious qualities. Only then do we discover how it wasn’t taken
from us, but rather we let our love drift away on waves of indifference.
I read once that we make time for what we
love. I’ve found that to be fundamentally
true with everything we enjoy in life. Not
just in the verbal professions of “I love you” but that love compels us to
remain interested and involved with what we cherish. Funny I guess I can compare that with people
who complain they don’t have any close friends but also that they don’t have time
to develop a relationship. When I hear
that I comment, “Stop fooling yourself, if your perfect dream were dropped into
your lap at this very second you’d not be able to identify how to keep it. And like everything else you miss right now,
you cut your ties and they drifted away in time.”
Where are your friends? Most are hoping to hear from
you…real soon. 
