everybody needs a buddy

My friend Elayne, who I call my happy friend, made an upbeat suggestion. “Let’s be positive partners,” she said, “and let’s set aside an hour a week to discuss how to keep ourselves optimistic and moving forward in this scary time.”

At first I smirked. Certainly we’d need a more stylish name, more modern, a title inspiring in and of itself. Happy Hunters? Joy Junkies? Silver Liners? Virus Vanquishers?

Definitely not Pity Pals, decidedly uncool right now. We’ve all come to realize complaining and criticizing is not going to make each day go any better.

Finally we settled on just plain Buddies, another person to grab onto, to lean into, to support us as we navigate the potholes ahead.

So at 10:00 on Thursday mornings, we Facetime and we see each other and feel better all at once, just like that. We’ve been friends a long time; we’ll make it through this thing together too.

But once the waving is over, we turn to the business at hand. How to make lemonade out of lemons, how to make the most of the time indoors and explore what perspective will keep our spirits high as we put one foot in front of the other.

Together we share what -- in our own spaces, with our own interests, our own shortcomings -- is adding meaning and depth to this unusual period at home. We look for areas of our lives that need attention so we’re calmer and more centered: my sleep issues, her daily dance challenge, my new work idea, her sleep issues. Lots of people are having sleep issues.

If ever there was a time to think positively, we figure this is it. People all over the country, the world, are cooking and walking and meditating and attacking those tasks, projects, dreams they’ve been promising to do but never found time to tackle until now.

Yet we can’t get so task-focused we forget to get light-hearted too.

My most recent boost came from reading about the “blind traveler,” an Englishman considered the greatest adventurer of Victorian times, a circumnavigator who ventured solo on foot, horseback, carriages, sailboats to explore the entire world without being able to see any of it. Not in the ordinary sense.

Along the way, James Holman found partners ready to offer a strong arm, a hot meal, a warm shelter before he continued his goal of getting “A Sense of the World,” the name of his biography by Jason Roberts.

Most of his exploration was done completely alone. But along the way, helpers sometimes eased him forward into the great unknown. He had buddies.

We all need them.

James Holman, like us right now, couldn’t wait to get out of the house. It was his mission to do the unimaginable -- trek across Africa, India, Siberia, even before most people knew where those places were. And do it blind.

Most of us aren’t handicapped, yet stuck at home we might feel like we are. His adventure was to get a sense of the whole world through taste, touch, feeling and sound. Ours, right now, is to power up a different set of senses -- compassion, patience, acceptance and yes, positivity -- to move one foot in front of the other in our small piece of the world with our eyes fully open.  

Now and again we need a cane -- a buddy who believes in us tried and true -- to walk with us through these untraveled potholes, arm-in-virtual-arm, together.

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