I had grandiose expectations for a recent reunion with my five closest friends. Nearly 20 years in the making, the gathering was both less and more than I had imagined. Two of my favorite texts inspired my anticipation and now give shape to my reflection on the event—T. S. Eliot’s poem Four Quartets and Thomas Merton’s essay “Fire Watch, July 4, 1952.” Both works speak to the relationship between relinquishment and spiritual fulfillment. Key to internalizing this connection is learning to embrace the profoundness of the moment while at the same time detaching oneself from it. For me, reconciling this apparent contradiction is bound up with my ongoing reflections about how friendship evolves over time and distance.
With age comes a growing awareness of being part of something vast stretching before us—God, the universe, eternity—which tends to focus the mind and spark a kind of conversation that can leave even longtime friends at a loss for words. As we watched the desert sunset, with its many stages of light and color, we drank it in, sharing the wonder and a silence that spoke of the imperceptible passing of days into years. Hence Merton: “Eternity is in the present. Eternity is in the palm of the hand. Eternity is a seed of fire, whose sudden roots break barriers that keep my heart from being an abyss.” And the questions, whether voiced or tacit—Are you where you want to be? Are you who you hoped you’d be? What has been gained and what lost?—remain, as ever, part of the Now we must embrace if our friendships are to thrive. At 40, when the concepts of time and eternity start to become rather more tangible, if not poignant, our old motto, carpe diem, carries new weight. Because for those who bother to ask those questions,
every moment is a new and shocking