A few days ago, Y received an unexpected personal direct message from a very dear friend from what today seems, forever, asking about his availability to speak.
It did raised concerns in him. They had not had a conversation for... what? five years? probably. After so many years of not speaking, was there something wrong?
We are so much used to only speak to those we love when something is not well, giving credibility to the idiotic proverb: "no news is good news", where in any case, the true meaning is that no news is no news at all.
Anyway, Y responded and by seeing that he was online, his reaction was to call him right away. He did respond and nothing seemed to be "wrong" and they agreed a suitable time to speak.
They always stayed in touch, and hence, somehow, we knew what was going on, and what he was up to -or at least we though so- and they were both in Y's friends group chat. They exchanged best wishes on special occasions, such as birthdays, Christmas and New Year, and eventually they shared some pics or a laugh over some memories of their younger selves.
However, it was not until this week that they managed to have a "conversation", a pleasant conversation indeed.
We really enjoy conversations. We have lots of conversations. The most enjoyable, those that ground us take place hiking in the mountains; here, there and everywhere.
We have built a strong sodality not only with our inner selves and with each other, but with a broader circle in which curiously there are few "old" friends (those that happen to be more siblings than friends), the rest are mostly "new" friends, some of which we barely know, or just happen to have met for the first time, and with whom we automatically connect by sharing a common understanding or perception of life that allows us to immediately go into profound conversations, while having the quietest mind and with an open hearth, with that certainty that we are just continuing a conversation that will never end.
With them, there is no need to share anything of our past, we are no longer who we thought we were, and we are just being, sharing who we are, mindful that we are here and now, in a manner that it is difficult with those that still relate to those that they think we are and viceversa.
In other words, sodality occurs in the here and now, and while memories are cherished, treasured and respected as the experiences that have shaped who we are, they no longer are, and never will be, they belong to our imagination, to our recollection, and have been shaped by emotions, sentiments and convenience.
We have moved to the infinite space of the here and now, that in which we share, shape our visions and conspire to create our present. There is where sodality resides.
There may be words, there may be silence. Sodality respects the sacredness of the moment that we honour by being, and holding such space for ourselves and for the others.
We realised based on yesterday's experience, how mindful we were when we were young, hence the good memories and love for those with whom we shared these memories, reminiscence to how we used to live in the here and now, in mindfulness, where conversations took place in the manner in which we are enjoying them again, just with different people, or maybe not, and that is fine too.
But then, we grew up and became adults, and there was no time for conversations, we are so full of ourselves and think that we are so important that we forgot even how to have conversations, we are too busy to have them, and not having time for being, what brings us together is only that past that no longer is and that future so full of our successful selves that so strongly attract us and keeps us so busy doing that does not allow us time to be.
So we grew up and started to share what we were doing, ceasing inadvertently to have conversations, remembrances of our sodality remained in our collective memory, our love is so great that we cannot cease to have some degree of relationship and connection; however, we ceased to be united in sodality.
Anyway, yesterday we were reminded that our former sodality is there latent and waiting to reemerge, it never left, at least not in this case, as it very well could have or has left for some.
In this case, our sodality was dormant and waiting for this times of vigil, quietud, solace and mindfulness to resurrect.
Among those things that we are grateful in these times of being alone together, we must add our gratitude for bringing back sodality into our lives.
We stand in sodality.
We believe so. Yo lo Creo.
The inspiration to use the weird and wonderful word Sodality in this post came from reading the 12 April entry in the book "A Word for Every Day of the Year" of Steven Poole:
"...
Sodality
It is at least conceivable that if there were more words in general use for love of one's fellow human beings, there might be some sociolinguistic magic be an increase in that sentiment, in hope of which we might adopt the charming word sodality. It comes from the Latin sodalis, for "mate" or "comrade", and denotes particularly a sense of civilized fellowship or companionship. The poet and classical scholar Thomas Stanley (himself a much-loved man), who died on this day in 1678, offers a taxonomy in his History of Philosophy (1956): 'Of friendship there are four kinds: Sodality, Affinity, Hospitality, Erotick ... The first is derived from conversation; the second from nature; the third from cohabitation; the fourth from affection'. Deriving as it does from conversation, and being particularly applied to the salon culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, then, sodality is a particularly literary kind of of (sic) friendship.
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