/karen/

World birth

Wednesday, 01 June, 2005

It's nice being able to see Guan on a weekly basis. At work he lends me CDs I can listen to while editing (and books which I wish I had time to read), explains the strange and wonderful things he's doing and enlightens me on what's going on around the traps (who are those strange people in the meeting room and what they doing?) It's also lovely that he likes seeing me around too. And he's got the bouncy ball in his room which was a much better option than caffeine to wake me up in the afternoon when all the commas start to look like bookworms.

But it is also odd that, in all my years of knowing Guan (I met Guan in ... 2001?), he has never heard me sing and he only had a vague idea of what sort of music I liked listening to (fair enough, really; how often do you listen to music with people? Though people at my church are gathering this Friday at Malcolm's for a music appreciation night which I know I shouldn't go to because of the Primary Document assignment I've got due Monday which I've been procrastinating over all evening). Elsie mentioned the other day too that she had never heard me sing. (Come to think of it, most people on my blogroll have never heard me sing.) And Naomi at church was surprised on Sunday to find I have a brother (I've known her as long as Ben).

Does it matter? Probably not. But it's just strange: I have friendships with all these different people but I've never really spent that much time with any of them and they have only seen one facet of me or the other—not me in totality. Before I was married, I worried about that a lot. I remember obsessing over my friendships—wondering if people really truly knew me and whether I could truly be known. Now sometimes I still worry about that but I also know that I do have someone who truly knows me and who is a part of me. Friendships, though still important, take a bit of a backseat simply because of time. I water and tend to them where I can, hoping and praying that they will not wilt away forever—that one day my friends will wake up and say, “Why am I bothering with you? I don't know you at all!”

There is a quote I found once in one my mum's books which a friend of mine in Canada used for an artwork:

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Anaïs Nin (Source)

There are friends whom I would like to be better friends with—hang out with them more often, do things together, go places, laugh with them, watch movies with them, listen to music with them, have intense discussions with them. But because of the way life is at the moment, I can't and I don't. I could rearrange my life so that they are my priority but in truth I have made my priority serving God and so I organise my life accordingly and take the opportunities, when they present themselves, to spend time with my friends.

But the doctrine of heaven (the eschaton as they continually say at college, so say that if you want to sound wise and learned) is comforting: I know that, while I have little to spare for my friends on earth, I will enjoy fellowship with my brothers and sisters in Christ for eternity. And maybe then we will laugh and watch movies and listen to music and have delightfully fruitful and intense discussions.

I'll sing them songs in the new heaven and the new earth.

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