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Today's
Meditation:
I can never express how grateful I am to friends who
have made allowances for my lapses, great and small.
I've sometimes been amazed at the way that friends will be
so forgiving when I've been expecting them to be anything
but forgiving.
But what I've learned is that this is a quality of true
friends. This is just something that friends
do. And one of the reasons that it's important to me
to know what friends do is so that I can be a friend to
others, because that's not something that ever was taught
to me when I was young. If I know how friends are
supposed to treat each other for the friendship to be
strong and true, then I can give to my friendships what I
need to give to them.
It's great to do fun things with friends. It's great
to share good times and to enjoy each other's
company. But if I don't want to be just a
fair-weather friend, then I really do need to make sure
that I'm fair, and that I don't refuse to allow my friends
to make their mistakes, to have their lapses without
facing judgment and condemnation from me. If I see a
friend do something wrong, I can tell them that without
judgment, and without rejecting their friendship in the
future.
Huge lapses that hurt other people may be a different
story, obviously, but the minor lapses are something that
we all make.
Friendship sometimes takes effort, and one of the things
that we can put a lot of effort into is allowing friends to
make their mistakes without worrying about ruining the
friendship. If I want to be a real friend, I have to
let my friends be the people they are, little lapses and
all.
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