As I said last month, I will be spending the next few months reflecting on the regrets often felt by those who are dying as they have been identified by hospice nurses.
The first regrets is, “I wish I had let myself be happier.”
The second is, “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
As soon as I read those words an image jumped into my mind. It was a “gif” I saw on a blog several months ago. The small repeating video was of a pebble tossed into a pond, the concentric waves flowed out and then, suddenly, the image reversed and they collapsed back to the center again.
I was not entirely sure why this image was so striking, but it was mesmerizing, the small waves flowing out and then back again, over and over.
I thought about that image when pondering this particular regret because that small video was an expression of the role of friendship in our lives.
We begin when we are younger, going out into the world to discover new things, have new experiences and, of course, meet new people. It happens in our neighborhoods and in our classrooms.
We meet and journey with so many people, and many of them become our friends. Then, we graduate from high school and move into the “real” world, and meet more people and the concentric rings flowing out from us flow farther and faster, touching so many lives and so many touching ours.
I think often about what those relationships have given me. When I went out into the world and began to meet people, there were some who met me and moved on, and that’s fine, but there were some who stopped, drawn to me and me to them. They loved me and wanted to be friends with me, they wanted me to be a part of their lives.
They taught me something as well, they taught me who I was, as an individual, as a person, not just as someone’s son or brother, but as myself. It is an absolutely essential relationship, because it is the revelation of self. There are times growing up, as there are for us all, when you begin to doubt your worth, your value or even the gift of your personhood, and then friends reach out and you remember and learn all over again.
They chose to be your friend, and saw something there even when it eluded us.
This matters, this is important; but then the concentric rings start to collapse back in on themselves. We start to make our sphere of influence smaller and smaller. We find the spouse, we find the job, we have the kids, we become the pastor, we join the community, and suddenly our focus begins to shift inward.
We find less and less time for friends because we have a family; we find less and less time for friends because we have a job and responsibilities. So we grow apart, meet less and less people, and slowly lose touch with those who changed our lives.
We are left with the Facebook birthday greeting and the Christmas card, perhaps the waves flow back until there is just a pebble left; and thus the regret of the dying.
I suppose the best thing to do is to remember, simply remember, what those relationships meant to us, the power and life and self-awareness (not to mention fun) that we found in them. That remembering is the great motivation to reach out again.
We need those people in our lives, those who knew us when, those who loved us because they saw something in us, something beautiful. Friends once, and always, have the amazing capacity to rise above the day-to-day routine of life and reveal a newness to be found in each day, or year, decade.
They love us and we love them, and that, in the end, is what matters, and why they deserve our attention and we theirs.
Because the regrets of the dying can teach us how to live, and what really matters.
Because friends look into our eyes and see the truth. Which is perhaps why the Lord, on the night before He died, looked into the eyes of the disciples and saw the truth of their lives, and revealed that truth to them.
In that gaze, they stopped being slaves, He called them friends. (John 15:15)
