Recently, I heard someone say you should fall in love with the world. (Thanks Alok)

I think that's true.

But I also think we should fall in love with other things... more than the trees or the plants and flowers that sustain us. The air we breathe. The earth that grows our food and the same earth that will receive our bodies in the end.

I think we should fall in love with the creatures that bring us joy... with the strangers that meet our eyes as they walk past us.... those who acknowledge us, offer us help... and those who don't. The people that give us complements just because... and the people who might want to but never will.

But it's also more than that as well.

I think we should fall in love with our friends.

More than anything else, we should fall in love with our friends.

I think we should revel in their embrace, covet intimacy with them. Hold their hands. Kiss them goodnight. Spend time curled up in their embrace watching trash movies and singing karaoke...

I think we should enjoy all of those knowing smiles and hand holding touchs and special secrets shared. Ties that bind through vulnerability and care.

Because...

These are the people who have shown up for us and the people that we have chosen. In our madness, in our neurotic tantrums, and those rare moments we are at our best.

And that matters.

And that's special.

I think we need to feel and fall deeply in love with them. These people that we call friends, we need to love them wildly... steal them from time to time to be alone in their presence. Just the two of us... precious moments alone. Let the world stop with them a moment as our fingers entwine and you share truths from the heart.

I think we should share ourselves with them, the darker parts and the messiness and the joy.. share all our lives, our fears. Our intimate thoughts, our dreams, fantasies.... and we should desire them, as they are... and we should both enjoy that, desire and desired.

We should allow ourselves to melt into these humans and let those connections grow strong and sustain us...

Because quite aside from husbands, wives, partners, paramores or otherwise, we need these quality authentic connections, and plenty of them... we need the friends who will do the things and be the things our partners cannot do alone... and that's ok. That's not a failure, it's an invitation to build community.

They will also be the ones to hold us in death and hold each other in love as the people who live on when we do not. They will be their own community of care when each of us is dead.

So. We should set out to fall deeply and genuinely and sometimes selfishly in love with those humans who are our people.... that's a gift.

In love, in life and in death.

That love isn't a threat to other relationships. It's raw, it's honest, it's inexplicable..... How incredible that some people get to share that love with a partner as well as their friends.

It's all an addition to life. An addition to the people we are, the humans we want to be in the world, and the ways in which we get to show up and walk through this world together. It makes us stronger.

What it really is, in essence, is a safety net, a structure, the woven strands of near invisible silk that binds us together in human passion, pain and joy. It is what will sustain our dying and the living on after our death.

So. The best thing to do in life? Maybe it really is to be in love with our friends. Deeply. Passionately. Unapologetically in love. Hold hands. Kiss goodnight. Hug for longer than is polite. Plan time to spend in embrace... Let the embrace last long enough that your nervous systems settles and says, 'hey, I know you. This is safe, familiar and feels divine..'.

And.... Tell our friends we love them. ❤️