What you wrote was so beautiful.

I am re reading The Path To Love by Deepak Chopra and what you said reminded me of the following passage:

“Love is the only blessing, and that means all love. If love is the ultimate reality, as the great teachers tell us, the slightest gesture of connection is a gesture of love. To reach across the wall of separation, whether to a friend , lover, family or stranger, is to act in the name of love, whether we consciously realize it or not.”

Like the shared trauma of climbers, or alcoholics, or cancer survivors. You share something, but it doesn’t always translate into more than that.

Coming off the mountain – as intense an experience as it is, and as much as we want to “keep in touch,” we don’t. Every now and then, someone touches us beyond the single experience that we share.

But in life we have choices of where and with whom we spend time. While I can appreciate those with whom I have shared common experiences – often if given the chance of spending more time with them, or time with others – it is others. Rehashing old things is great for a party, “Do you remember when….” but not necessarily for more of a human investment than that. And that is ok. It really is ok.

We might even miss someone who dies, or we lose touch with for various reasons- but the test is always this — do you want to meet them -look them in the eye, and say -”hey, I know where you are coming from” or do they have sufficient interest to replace time you would spend with a friend