Fat Ninja

Friendship’s a funny and fickle thing. I never realized how terribly fragile a thing it can be;� a thing so precious and vital to the spirit’s growth and survival. Strangely, we often never recognize a thing’s true value and potential until it�teeters upon the cusp of loss.

As a Foreign Service brat I perhaps have a very skewed and cynical view of friendship. My youth was full of disjointed and often broken relationships. It was in these formative years that I really developed my notion of friendship. Friendship, to me, was transient at best. The strength of emotional bonds quickly proved no match for the call of a new assignment, be it back in the U.S. or in another far-off land.

It was amidst the turbulence of these days that my concept of friendship was formed. It proved to me a very painful double-edged sword. At once wonderful, to be surrounded by peers, sharing laughter and comraderie, and at the same time dreaded for its impermanence.

This trend of picking up and moving on has hounded me for much of my life. College proved a difficult hurdle, what with the leaving of familiar surroundings and support groups (i.e., family, friends, etc). After a miserable first semester, rife with academic and moral failures, I once again left those I had come to know and love for home. But it wasn’t home. Many friends were� going to college elsewhere, while I finished my second semester at Northern Virginia Community College.

Then it was off to Iowa to finish my higher education, a transition that was, most certainly, my most difficult. In time I came to call it home, but I soon found that I needed to move out of the nest and find some direction. My move to Minneapolis proved my most successful, as were it not for that I would not have met Laura and I would not have two beautiful children to hug and drive me crazy.

Then, seeking a new beginning and refuge from harsh Mid-Western winters, we moved West; bound for Oregon. We didn’t know a soul here and knew little of the region. It’s proven a good decision. It’s a beautiful place to live and raise a family, and I found a great job out here. I’ve also met some great people and made some true friends.

Yet, here we are and I feel that things have somehow changed. I don’t know what in particular has shifted, but I certainly sense an uneasy silence. Perhaps it’s me and my skewed view of relationships, perhaps not. I will say that in my growing older, I’ve come to have a far more profound respect for personal relationships. They are the bonds that tie us to that greater spirit from which we came. They are links to that collective consciousness that gave us birth.

Alright, enough rambling. I’m out.

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