I just walked 6800 steps through the vineyard and never met a
car or a human being. One and half hours of solitude as I thought of friends I
had not heard from and wondered how they were surviving this isolation. All my life I’ve made a habit of calling someone
whose name comes to mind. I think it is
a remnant of the Highland Gaelic belief in the Second Sight. I often feel I
know things I have no reason or basis to know.
I am blessed with a coterie of friends who fit the
definition of Anam Cara which is described in a book written by John O’Donohue. Anum cara is the word for a Soul Friend in
Gaelic. When you pick up the phone or meet someone you have heard from for a
week or a year or 3 years and you pick up the conversation as if there had been
no interruption You are talking to a soul friend. The depth of the conversation is the sign of
the real depth of the Anam Cara ness. You can talk the weather or how is your
job. That doesn’t count.
The real connection comes when you begin to reveal your
soul. Life changing experiences of
death, divorce, professional failure or loss of dreams for the future. It can’t
be one way. Both you and your Anam Cara need to share the view of our souls. Then
it is real.
A real Anum Cara is someone who can accept you with all your
warts and faults and not turn away. There is no one who does not have characteristics
that might make one want to walk away angry or disgusted. For
some, the desire to eat animals that were living breathing creatures and
subjecting them to the process of meat production is repulsive. One of my AC is
one such, but she can accept that I love bacon and lamb sandwiches and still
communicate deeply with me. I suspect
she will never stop verbally raising the images of abattoirs, but I will always
laugh gently and move away from breakfast or lunch conversations.
Racial references that are hurtful present the same problem
even among good friends. I told a political story about the Southern US just as
it was told to me, using the Governor’s actual words that were commonly used in
the 1950’s. One of my AC was offended and told me so. The point was that for him that word was
never to be used. We have worked
together for years and our friendship is still deep although we don’t see each
other very much. I’m sure if I picked up
the phone and called, he would pick up our conversation that has 2-year gap in
it like we had spoken only yesterday.
If you think through your friendships call the names that
come to mind. I have always loved the “Concept of 6 Degrees of Separation”
expanded by the Hungarian author, Karinthy in 1929. His idea was that 2 individuals are separated
by only 5 people. He believed that if he wanted to, he could contact to any
human being on earth through personal acquaintances. I found my first girlfriend that I hadn’t
seen in 40 years with 5 phone calls. Try it sometime in Quarantine when the
world seems to be closing in. I did this
before Linked-In or Facebook which are only technologies based on this theory. I
bet writing the patent on this idea was very interesting.
We all have Anam Caras if we allow ourselves to think about
what is hardest to bear in the social isolation required by public measures in
an epidemic. Loss of human touch can be mitigated by a phone call or two. Reach out and touch them.
