Friendship

I connected with an old friend yesterday. We hadn’t talked in many years. He was once my boss first and then instantly my friend. It was and is his nature to embrace, to encourage, to guide from his atavistic perspective to nurture and be of global service.

He was the first news director in my long television career to encourage me to write commentary. He came into my office one Friday and said: “this has been a tough week in New York City, how about writing something to close the broadcast tonight to put it all into a positive perspective.” I did and I haven’t stopped since.

Some people say you cannot have a true relationship within a mercantile relationship. I don’t agree, but you do need to have the ability to compartmentalize the relationship into personal and professional.

But friendship is more than that so let me back up for a moment. I think we each come into this earthly density in order to physically and emotionally experience life and grow and find our individual ways to become ONE with “All that Is.” The “All that Is” can be anything you’d like it to be in the comfort of your personal understanding. I don’t want The Source to be personified into a deity image for that could make it a dogmatic constriction.

The bottom line is that the awareness of true friendship comes to those who interact in life’s experiences and intuitively know that their souls are from the same spiritual cluster. Somewhere deep within we acknowledge that we came here in this time to play it all out in the magnificent drama of life.

My friend has been my friend for eternity and I know it and so does he and that makes the relationship solid and one of both corporal and spiritual appreciation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote a little known essay on the uses of great men. (It has been one of my favorites for five decades.) Emerson begins his essay with, “It is natural to believe in great men.” He concludes by saying: “It is for man to tame the chaos; on every side, whilst he lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of song …(so) that the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied.”

My friend is a great man. Not because I say so, but because he is. I would encourage you to read his memoir, The Newslife: from Arkansas to Aruba available on amazon.com. Stephen Cohen is a quintessential journalist, a mentor and a friend.