Friendships are easier when we have nothing on our minds

OVER THE weekend I had the opportunity to share our beautiful city of York with some new American friends, a couple who are around our age with similar aged children. We hadn’t known them long, in fact, I had only known the wife for a matter of days, back in February, when we had been on the same practitioner training in La Conner, Washington; but we had got on so easily, we had kept in contact and when they said they were coming to the UK, I was so excited for them to visit.

It was a beautiful experience, and it was like we had known each other for our whole lives. My husband had taken her husband off, whom he had just met, as he loved English football and had wanted to see a live match, whilst she and I spent the day together, never running out of anything to say, the conversation flowing easily and naturally, for all of us.

At the end of the day, before the guys came back, we remarked how simple our meeting had been and wondered why, it was that our connection had been so beautiful and natural.

What we noticed is that we had nothing on our minds. What I mean by that was that I (nor she) were worried about what the other thought, we weren’t worried about being judged or criticised, neither of us was worried about meeting up, or that we’d run out of conversation or say the wrong thing. If there had been any insecure thinking along those lines, we had simply not paid attention to it, and allowed it to pass. Our minds were empty, we were simply in the moment with each other, being our natural selves, going from one moment to another moment, and before we knew it the moments had joined together to form hours, and hours into a whole day.

It was a beautiful reminder of how we create real connection. So often we think we have to ‘do’ something, think in a particular way or be different in some way from the person that we think we are. I’ve lost count of the number of techniques I have tried over the years to try to be more ‘connectable’. However, it’s far more simple than that, so simple in fact, it often gets completely overlooked, just as we did, in fact, until we noticed it.

As I see it there always exists a connection between us all, but I accept it doesn’t always seem like that. We have experiences and history of each other, ideas about what we are all like, worries about what others may think, do, feel, react, fears about what might happen or how things might turn out, we can be quite judgemental about others, and ourselves, and a whole host of other thinking that simply seems to get in the way.

All of this thinking simply distracts us from what really is on offer, our thinking is, after all, very compelling and in that moment can seem very real and believable. However, a thought can only ever be a thought, and like all thought, passes when we pay little attention to it, and when we do, and our minds are clearer, there is only ever one thing left – and that is, connection.

It made me wonder how richer all of our relationships would be if we had less (or nothing) on our minds.