Friends that send you reminders...

Today, in the mail, I received a beautiful little card from Zoila, one of my college roommates and dearest friends. Unfortunately with the rise in use of the internet and technology, people have forgotten how truly amazing it is to receive a special thing in the mail. Such as a letter, a card, a postcard, a box of treats, anything that let's you know that although separated by miles and bodies of water you are in someone's thoughts. Sure, this can be done with an e-mail or a post on someone's facebook wall, but there is something so much more significant in a handwritten, postmarked letter.

Included in this card was a quote that Zoila has found timelessly rewarding and inspiring. Anne Dillard wrote in her novel Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, "The shadow’s the thing. Outside shadows are blue, I read, because they
are lighted by the blue sky and not the yellow sun. Their blueness bespeaks infinitesimal particles scattered down inestimable distance. Muslims, whose religion bans representational art as idolatrous, don’t observe the rule strictly; but they do forbid sculpture, because it casts a shadow. So shadows define the real. If I no longer see shadows as “dark marks,” as do the newly sighted, then I see them as making some sort of sense of the light. They give the light the distance; they put it in its place. They inform my eyes of my location here, here O Israel, here in the world’s flawed sculpture, here in the flickering shade of the nothingness between me and the light."

A true friend sent this to remind me that the "joy, happiness, sweetness, and lightness of our lives are made possible by unhappiness, bitterness, and darkness. The darkness carefully gives form to the art that is life".

This is so true, what is seen by the human eye, is only truly seen because it is defined by the shadows. Our character, our life, our story cannot be defined by only good and happy moments (the light), but also by the low and bad moments (the dark). Good or Bad, where ever your life might be, every moment is essential to the final product, that is the story of our lives, the character we become.

(and for Zoila, if you read this, I wrote this response while listening to Queen- Bohemian Rhapsody, not purposely but it happened to play on my play list and I feel like that may have been destiny)