Cosmic Pilgrims

a wandering star
completes a constellation
bright spark of friendship

Kim M. Russell, 2017

Image found on space.com

My response to Carpe Diem #1129 friendship

In The Pilgrimage, Paulo develops a friendship with his guide Petrus. They are on the Road to Santiago together and will help each other to conquer the ‘devils’ on the way, but they will also be happy together and cry together. That’s friendship, and it isn’t easy; it’s a continuous ‘battle’ to keep the friendship alive. Of course there will be friends who don’t want to give the energy to keep their friendship alive. If you have such a friend, let him go – this is what Petrus, Paulo’s guide says – they are not a real friend. In times of sadness you get to know who your real friends are, because they will stay close to you, they will comfort you, they will cry with you and they will give you energy.

[…] ‘Once, a poet said that no man is an island. In order to fight the good fight, we need help. We need friends, and when the friends aren’t nearby, we have to turn solitude into our main weapon. We need the help of everything around us in order to take the necessary steps toward our goal. Everything has to be a personal manifestation of our will to win the good fight. If we don’t understand that, then we don’t recognize that we need everything and everybody, and we become arrogant warriors. And our arrogance will defeat us in the end, because we will be so sure of ourselves that we won’t see the pitfalls there on the field of battle.’ […](Source: The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho)

© Chèvrefeuille