Once again this morning I'm feeling a bit reflective, and one of the things foremost on my mind in light of recent events in my personal life is the notion of men and women being friends. Friendship is a tenuous thing. When we are young, we make friends quite easily--boy, girl, doesn't really matter. Taking it back to the sandbox... Being in the same place at the same time is enough for us to call another human "friend." Then as we grow up, society teaches us that friendship is a much more complicated thing. It involves bonds, trust, emotion, history, baggage, the list could go on and on, but I think you "get" my point. My question is this: Is friendship really that complicated as we get older or do we make it that way because society and "life experience" tells us so? The more I meditate the more I realize we do so much to ourselves in this life--much moreso than others do to us. People can't do things "to us." We have to allow them into our lives and give them the power to "do to us." It's not something they can just take on their own. It's a choice WE make as humans. So, heading back to my original topic of men and women being friends...

Is it really possible? Or does society indoctrinate us to feel that men and women can only have a sexual/ physical relationship? Anyone who has watched When Harry Met Sally knows that was a question at the root of the movie's theme. Of course, in that instance, it turned out that they could not as Harry slept with Sally and eventually fell in love with her in true Hollywood fashion. Real life is a bit more complicated, in my opinion, or perhaps it isn't, but it does provide some food for thought. Are we as evolved as we think we are, or are we really just primal creatures looking for the perfect opportunity for the next "hook up"?

In addition, is it possible for exlovers to ever be friends? (Lovers here is used loosely as a term referring to people who have been in a relationship not necessarily people who have had sex.) I hesitate to say they can be--I do feel that anyone who was in an intimate relationship with another and then falls out of that relationship does so for a reason, usually having to do with trust on some level. That brings us back to the question of trust in friendship--doesn't one have to TRUST another in order to be friends with him/her? After all, friends are those with whom you share your most intimate secrets--sometimes even those secrets that aren't shared with a lover. I know for a fact that although I would have considered him to be my best friend for the better part of my adult life, my ex and I are certainly no longer friends. Yet, each of us knows things about the other that we choose to keep private as a result of the former bonds of that relationship. Again, a point to ponder...on some level even though trust has be irrepairably violated there, doesn't some form of trust have to continue to exist?

I guess the conclusion that I've come to is this...I miss the sandbox. Life was much less complicated; friendship was much less complicated. Friendship IS a tenuous, precious thing, so when it is found, it must be treasured and nurtured. We can't allow anyone or anything to begin to eat away at it lest it disappait quickly.