Good Souls
No, it’s not the title of a new best selling novel by some unknown, Kenyan born, London based, award winning, young and funky writer (not yet anyway), it’s something I’ve been thinking about this week.
I’ve had a lot of time to spend thinking. Doing a job where you work for half an hour and then sit drinking tea for four hours gives you that luxury. After 4 days straight of it you have nothing to say to your co workers, and quickly lose yourself in your own thoughts.
Got an email from a friend in Canada, someone I’ve not heard from for a long time. Nothing special, no revelations or massive news, just a ‘how you doing’ kinda email. But it was nice to get, nice to be thought of. Set me off thinking about how some people you come across, even if you only share your lives together for a brief time, make an impact on you. They rock your world, open your eyes, blow your mind and change your life.
These people you feel you just click with at a deep level, you know they have good souls and you understand them better in half an hour than someone with a dubious soul who you might have known for months. (Dubious soul? Someone ill at ease with themselves, someone who can’t see, or can’t stop their self destructive behaviour. Someone who hurts others to create drama in order to feel like the centre of attention, someone who brings others down in order to make themselves feel better, someone who can’t see the harm they do themselves.)
I’ve recently known people of both sorts, the difference between that instinctive feeling of rightness and the gradual realisation that some one has a splintered and damaged soul is just worlds apart. It’s not love at first sight, but it’s the feeling of two compatible people sharing their happiness such things are possible.
Think of your best friends, those that have been with you through the good times and the bad, those that ask nothing from you but that you be yourself. Good souls. Flaky friends who use you and cast you aside, people to whom you’re nothing more than a tool for making themselves feel better. Bad souls. (To quote a famous meerkat) Simples.
Peace
