I have been thinking about perception lately. About the importance of seeing past limiting values and ideas so that love can shine through, always.

For example: I have a few friends that call me often, but I am notoriously slow to return phonecalls (let alone retrieve messages) so their efforts often go unrewarded for a small spell. To them this ‘small spell’ is an eternity, so after a few more days of them calling me and getting no reply no matter how urgent their pleadings, I usually receive a nasty, vaguely threatening follow-up call hinting at the dissolution of the friendship if I don’t take three fucking seconds to pick up the phone and dial seven goddamn numbers. Not surprisingly I am now much less motivated to return their calls. So, I am labeled a flaky, disappointing friend to these humans.

And to them I suppose I am.

Over the years this unfulfilling pattern forces these people to put me in the NOT a close friend category. Sure I still get invited to the big group b-day party or the occasional BBQ, but I have lost my what’s-new-in-my world dinner pal privileges.

Strangely, I am not this way with everyone. There are people I speak to daily, even hourly. People I see regularly. But my kind of regularly. Once or twice a week. Or month. Or year. Or decade. These people make a little more space for my introversion, gap-outs and retreats. They are able to hold on to the continuity of our connection. Maybe they are built this way. Maybe they have learned the skill of Maturity. Or earned it through painful trial and error. I know I have; I have been both the angry, rejected, abandoned dialer and the irritated, encroached-upon, overwhelmed dialee.

So…even though my OCD direct communication addict friends don’t give me a wide enough berth, I will step back and see the larger design, lovingly holding the space for your darling tantrums to blow over so I can show up, with gift in hand, to your kid’s b-day party, smiling, and mean it.