The Hectic Attic

Have you ever met someone, and from that first moment you knew there was something special about them?

When a friendship was formed quickly and easily, and from the start you felt like this person knew you better than anyone ever could. You may have just met an Anam Cara.

Anam Cara is the Gaelic term for a soul friend. It is much more than just a regular friendship – the Anam Cara friendship is deep and transcendent. An Anam Cara knows your thoughts, your feelings, your past and your present sometimes better than you do.

The meaning of Anam cara is Soul Friend – Anam = Soul and Cara = Friend. An Anam cara offers spiritual direction. This includes the invitation to the awakening of your emotional body/mind/soul.

At one time or another we have all felt lonely or isolated. We have all had times were we felt misunderstood; standing on the outside looking in, just longing to belong. The Anam Cara eases that feeling of loneliness and isolation. Our Anam Cara understands us at a deep, spiritual level, and reminds us that we are never alone. They provide shelter from the storm and a light in the darkest of places.

Our Anam Cara is not necessarily our spouse, or partner (though they can be). Frequently our Anam Cara fills the role of a best friend and confidant. An Anam Cara may be a life time friend, who appears to us in childhood and stays with us throughout the years. Or they may appear later in life to accompany us on our journey. They may stay for years, or go out with the tide. However long they stay, their presence is a gift and a blessing.

And just as we are blessed by this relationship, so they are blessed too, because we, also, are an Anam Cara.

A Friendship Blessing
From the book “Anam Cara” By John O’Donohue

May you be blessed with good friends.
May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.
May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness.
May this change you.
May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold in you.
May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging.
May you treasure your friends.
May you be good to them and may you be there for them;
May they bring you all the blessings, challenges, truth, and light that you need for your journey.
May you never be isolated.
May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam cara.

Today, is Friend’s Day here in Brazil

Through my life, I called many people friend, and I had many deceptions too.

I think these deceptions are not due to bad friendship, but to due to people’s expectations on friendship.

If you ask two or more people, each one will give you a different meaning to friendship. But I think, nothing meant more than a text from Vinicius de Moraes – Brazilian Writer and Composer, on friendship…

Friend Wanted

It doesn’t need to be a man, it’s enough to be human, it’s enough to have feelings, It’s enough to have a heart. Needs to know when to speak, and to be quiet, but above all, it needs to know how to listen. It needs to like poetry, the night, and the songs of the wind. It needs to have a love, a big love to somebody, or at least to miss this love in case it does not have it. It needs to love as much as it can and respect the pain that the others carry with them. It needs to know how to keep a secret, and it must not be a burden. It’s not necessary to be new, but does not need to be second hand. It can have been deceived, because all friends are. It’s not necessary to be pure, but can’t be vulgar. Must have a goal, and be afraid of loosing it, and in case it does not have a goal, it must feel the great vacuum that it leaves inside. It needs to have human senses, and his main objective must be the friend. It must feel pity for the sad people and comprehend the immense emptiness of the solitaries.

It must like children and feel sorry for the ones that could not grow up. Friend Wanted, to like the same things, and that gets touched when called a Friend. It needs to know how o talk about simple things, from drizzles to rains and thunder storms, and about childhood memories. Friend –Wanted, so we don’t get crazy. Someone to talk about the beauty seen, as well as the sadness,. Someone to talk about the anxieties and realizations, the dreams and reality. It must like desert streets, puddles and wet pathways, must like sidewalks and highways, grass after the rain and laying down on it in a sunny day.
Friend Wanted, someone that says the life is worthy living, not because it’s beautiful, but because you already have a friend.

Friend Wanted, so we can stop crying, so we don’t live over the past in search of lost memories. Someone that put the hand on you shoulder, smiling and crying, but someone that calls us Friend, so we are conscious we are still alive.

Vinícius de Moraes

HAPPY FRIEND’S DAY!

Aline Friend Martins

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