Society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Refuge as cheap.  Safety in relationships as cheap.

I never thought to look at them that way.

I’ve always regarded friends as people we feel safe with, that it’s the number one factor that determines a friendship: Do we feel safe to be?  To be honest and just be?   Friends are sanctuaries not necessarily because they protect us from harm, but because they’re just there– no judgment, no demands.  They listen, they understand, and sometimes they don’t even have to say anything. And we do the same for them.

But I never realized how hard it is to really have no demands.  And to not demand even this safety in friendship.

One of the most hurtful things I’ve ever told a friend was “I don’t expect anything from you.” It came from a place of disappointment, of not wanting to be disappointed again, and it also hurt me to say it.  When you don’t expect, you acknowledge a diminished regard for the other.  And yes, some kind of safety sets in, because you’re not putting yourself out there anymore, you’ve already pulled back.

This isn’t the kind of refuge we want in relationships.   Rilke calls it cheap and advises us to brave the difficult path of learning to say “No expectations” sincerely, up close and with zero bitterness, coming from a place of love.

Maybe it helps to ask, ”What is refuge?”  We often equate it with comfort or protection, maybe even a certain untouchability: I am comfortable at a safe distance.  I feel safe when I don’t know you, or when I only touch you up to here, and when you only touch me up to there.

But I think true refuge is actually the opposite– it’s a drawing as near as possible, and also an opening as wide as possible, to someone, something:  I am near but I am moving, we are both moving.  And the time and place where we meet is also moving, adjusting to what it needs to do, what it needs us to do.

I am learning that friendship is movable, and that shifts are not endings.  Safety is not presence or 24-7 availability.  It’s not even loyalty — there is also a danger in over-loyalty.  There is no promise of tomorrow or yesterday, only a sensitivity to what is and what is not, right here, right now.

Where does friendship go?  It goes where it goes.

I drew this only a few days ago, so much anger then. I woke up in the middle of the night and just put pen to paper and let it out.  I even dreamt this scene in such vivid color I swore I was going to paint a whole series about burning bridges.

Now it’s making me chuckle, and that’s not a bad thing.

The cloud has passed, or has nearly passed, and wow.   I’m slightly worried it went by so fast.

Pwera balik.

I haven’t paid attention to TV for over six years now, but today I couldn’t cast it aside so easily. What was on? Local news.

Talk of the water hyacinth invasion in Cotabato was worrisome and frustrating– 200,000 hectares of hardy plants on the offense, surely no match for 2 backhoes! It’s a real life attack-of-the-killer-bees/ants/corn and in a man-vs-nature scenario, what chance does man have, really? What more the ill-equipped Pinoy? Then news of shared classrooms came on– shared not between sections but between grade levels: grade 1 kids sitting almost next to grade 2 kids in small circles around their teachers. Who can learn in an environment like this, and especially when simply learning is not enough anymore, when what is needed is for children to learn well?

Switching channels got me to Willie’s show–and I realized I didn’t even know he was back on TV.

I’ve been so out of touch, thinking all this time that I was being responsible. I banished TV from my everyday life because it got too noisy, too cluttered, and I just assumed (or convinced myself) I wasn’t missing out. I still had the internet and twitter for news updates, and I got to stay “in touch” with the world through filters of my choosing.

But have I really been in touch? Six years of no TV (and no newspapers, no radio, no magazines) and how different have my everydays turned out?

When you retreat into a cave, you get to work on your inner circle–all the things within reach. But there comes a point when you realize your world has gotten so small, that keeping the noise out has become just a vain exercise. Maybe because you’ve recharged for so long, you have so much surplus energy, and you actually owe it to those who haven’t had your luxury to put it to good use “out there”.

The same old questions are still there– who will save the Philippines? What can I do?

“We are just passing through,” Acrylic on Paper, 2010

There are friendships we hold sacred– people who are our crutches or default, much like family.  They’re just there, won’t go anywhere, no need for validation. Even when we fight and squabble (if  we do), the thought of breaking ties or “losing” each other is non-existent.

Next to love or romance, friendships are stable, non-volatile.  I once wrote about this in Love is not it,  inspired by this line: “Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love.”

I used to think it’s because friendships, particularly soul friendships, last forever.

But what is forever?

Why do we find comfort in forever?

When something cannot be taken from us, we relax, we lose the “security” worry.   We like the idea of unlimited anything– unlimited food, money, vacations.   Why not unlimited time, or people, right?

Forever friends.  Best friends.  Travel-mates–people we brave our journeys with, whether we are on the same journey or not.

Having even just one person believe in us, understand us, be “just there”… it’s enough to empower us to conquer the world!

But many of those who truly seek, advise the opposite: to dwell on impermanence, that everything passes.

Forever is a distraction, a step away, and we must allow even the most sacred people in our lives breathing space to leave when it’s time to leave.  And when it’s us who are being called to leave, we pray for the courage to do the same.

I grew up loving the word “dreamer”.  For me, it brought forth not just a promise, but an assurance that that promise could and would be made real.

It’s not my favorite word anymore.

Neither is food.  Nor travel.  Nor the Philippines, Filipino, saving the world.

I don’t like the same things I used to like — they don’t make me happy, don’t light up my eyes.

What lights up my eyes now?

Is that even the question that needs asking?