Thought Picnic: Choose your travel companions carefully

Sharing with the caring

Choose your travel companions carefully, they are usually rarely blood-related but the bonding that grows between you gives a daring sense of adventure that you won’t wish for another to share the experience.

The journeys you venture on in life come with perils and triumphs, you must think about who would support and succour you first in the wilderness and long before you get to the city comforts that mask the true nature of your company.

Know the wolf cries

Fairweather friends are many, feigning interest, love, and engagement, sometimes our discernment and the ability to be a judge of character deserts us and in the process, we face unexpected betrayal and hurt. To know the signs early is to be blessed beyond measure.

When you are following someone, do not follow them too close so that you cannot cut yourself loose when they are determined to end up in a ditch. You do not have to be collateral out of blind loyalty. Fall because of your misstep rather than out of using another’s eyes.

Know the person indeed

If your friends are your relations, you are probably lucky, in every case. judge a person on their own character and integrity and avoid allowing the corporate trust in an environment of allegiances like a place of worship, business, or a club to vouch for your association. Many have had their fingers burnt in being taken advantage of by malevolent people covered by community settings.

Be wary of sycophancy or bias, take the compliments and test the sincerity of anything that attempts to puff you up, between friends, honesty, frankness, openness, and bluntness does crucially matter. You need to know who would pull you out of the fire. They will always stand with you yet will not let you get away with bad behaviour. We all need accountability partners, cherish them with love, honour and respect.

Choose your travel companions wisely, that can be the difference between getting to your destination or perishing along the way.

Thought Picnic: Thoughts in grief

Get the thoughts

The thoughts that crowd my mind continuously as events and activities of the days past occupy one to the absence of intimate or social contact.

It is an unhealthy existence in some ways, my big apartment protects me from the elements but does not protect me from my thoughts – I sit like a hermit rolling the thoughts around without pause or stillness – it is no meditation but that is what it seems like.

I think I am a private man; I come alive at work, in gatherings I could be quite reserved, whereas with strangers a conversation can begin and it could go on for hours if time allows it.

One needs to get out more for this kind of interaction because I am noticing that it is seriously energy sapping having to deal with things alone.

Person to person

In grief, one needs to talk, maybe one needs a hug, a sense of caring outside oneself can go a long way – many calls need to be made but how can one give comfort when you are self-comforted and how can one give succour from just being a loner of sorts?

Indeed, my dad has a point, companionship has its uses and benefits but I have grown up to eschew such communal essentials that the thoughts of those are too alien to contemplate for any length of time.

Even when I was very ill, I was the most vulnerable in need in such great help and even I employed that help quite sparingly – the comfort of being in my own home for days on end seemed to have a tonic effect for my recovery.

My neighbours and friends did a lot for which one is grateful but introversion and introspection in this very private person is most externalised in the writing and the expressions in words.

Mine for me

That surely is not enough, but change is probably going to be hardest thing to entertain; the relationships I desire are far from the norm, the companionships I crave are different, the love that fulfils is strange but the happiness it would bring is universally understood.

A hand to hold, a hug so bold, a kiss so brazen and a love that dare not speak its name – a dare for life and dear to live for – it is time to find and keep, no more unrequited love, no more fear to approach – Gosh! I write better than I would do, but the notice is out, there are things to do, this man must no more live alone.