Reflections of a poor friend on the blessing of friendship

"I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, — a possession for all time. Nor is nature so poor but she gives me this joy several times, and thus we weave social threads of our own, a new web of relations; and, as many thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, we shall by and by stand in a new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather not I, but the Deity in me and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many one. High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. These are new poetry of the first Bard, — poetry without stop, — hymn, ode, and epic, poetry still flowing, Apollo and the Muses chanting still. Will these, too, separate themselves from me again, or some of them? I know not, but I fear it not; for my relation to them is so pure, that we hold by simple affinity, and the Genius of my life being thus social, the same affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these men and women, wherever I may be." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have not the depth of philosophical skill so artfully exhibited in this poetic exerpt from Emerson's classic essays, but in reading his words my soul recognizes a kinship of understanding.There is a fellowship of the mind that is a rare and priceless gift. To associate with those who engage and inspire the best that is within us should be our life's ambition. I exist in this perpetual state of awe watching those sparkling stars who draw forth the effervessence of all those with whom they come in contact. Those lively spirits who were born to bring out the shyest wallflowers from their comfortable corners. I aspire to that unfeigned attention to the unique nature of each friend I make. To some I think that is a gift divinely bestowed, but hope that it is a talent someone more introspective in nature can strive to develop despite her firmly independent and semiwithdrawing nature.