Thought Picnic: Friendship is a test that never ends

Tested and testing

I pass many tests I do not believe I can pass, many not as a result of study but as a study of resolve. The extent to which I have allowed myself to be tested beyond the limits that are tolerable yet somewhere in my cabinet of virtue I find the tolerance. I tolerate a lot.

If you were to survey my tongue, you will find the accidents of restraint, the number of times I have bitten my tongue and resisted blurting out an expletive. With equanimity, I absorb the shocks and displeasure even when I should explode, I become a fully corked volcano stopped short from spewing out pyroclastic flows hoping the pressure subsides.

Friends escaping sanction

I think to myself, friends are a rare breed for whom such allowances are made where others would not find an inch of escape to act with the levity to abuse the familiarity of relationships that breeds contempt and disrespect that we overlook as those we like, and love take liberties and licence on our generosity and much that we share.

Willingly we become masochists of the violation by the hands and whims of those that are not strangers to us, our patience an enduring virtue that could attract the desire to overlook while it demands the irascible. I guess you find yourself entering the twilight zone of Jesus’ advice to forgive seventy times seven times.

They unbeknownst to them wrong you so gravely and yet they do no wrong. It is the stuff of friendships, and that count might just run out and weaken the bond to when it cannot but break. It does break when being careless, carefree and without care deals a lesson of sobriety in reality that you can take no more. How much more? You can never really tell.