A friend is a loved one who awakens your life
in order to free the wild possibilities within you. --John
O'Donohue
Anam Cara and the Essence of True Friendship
--by Maria
Popova, syndicated from brainpickings.org,
Oct 21, 2015
Aristotle
laid out the philosophical foundation of friendship as the art of
holding up a mirror to each other’s souls. Two millennia later, Emerson
contemplated its two
pillars of truth and tenderness. Another century later, C.S.
Lewis wrote: “Friendship
is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself… It has no
survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to
survival.”
But
nowhere do the beauty, mystery, and soul-sustenance of friendship come more
vibrantly alive than in the 1997 masterwork Anam
Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (public
library) by the late, great Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue (January 1, 1956–January 4, 2008), titled
after the Gaelic for “soul-friend” — a beautiful concept that elegantly
encapsulates what Aristotle and Emerson and Lewis articulated in many more
words.
O’Donohue
examines the essence and origin of the term:
In
the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship.
One of the fascinating ideas here is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term
for this is anam
cara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and cara is the word for friend. So anam carain
the Celtic world was the “soul friend.” In the early Celtic church, a person who
acted as a teacher, companion, or spiritual guide was called an anam
cara. It originally referred to someone to whom you confessed, revealing
the hidden intimacies of your life. With the anam
cara you could share your
inner-most self, your mind and your heart. This friendship was an act of
recognition and belonging. When you had ananam
cara, your friendship cut across all convention, morality, and category.
You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the “friend of your soul.”
The Celtic understanding did not set limitations of space or time on the soul.
There is no cage for the soul. The soul is a divine light that flows into you
and into your Other. This art of belonging awakened and fostered a deep and
special companionship.
The
kind of friendship one finds in an anam
cara, O’Donohue argues, is a very special form of love — not the kind that
leads us to pit
the platonic against the romantic but something much larger and more
transcendent:
In
this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The
superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall
away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and
understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home.
Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel
free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person’s soul…
This art of love discloses the special and sacred identity of the other person.
Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other
person’s individuality and soul. Love alone is literate in the world of origin;
it can decipher identity and destiny.
But
being an anam
cara requires of a purposeful
presence — it asks that we show up with absolute integrity of intention. That
interior intentionality, O’Donohue suggests, is what sets the true anam
cara apart from the acquaintance
or the casual friend — a distinction all the more important today, in a culture
where we throw the word “friend” around all too hastily, designating little more
than perfunctory affiliation. But this faculty of showing up must be an active
presence rather than a mere abstraction — the person who declares herself a
friend but shirks when the other’s soul most needs seeing is not an anam
cara.
O’Donohue
writes:
The
heart learns a new art of feeling. Such friendship is neither cerebral nor
abstract. In Celtic tradition, the anam
cara was not merely a metaphor or
ideal. It was a soul-bond that existed as a recognized and admired social
construct. It altered the meaning of identity and perception. When your
affection is kindled, the world of your intellect takes on a new tenderness and
compassion… You look and see and understand differently. Initially, this can be
disruptive and awkward, but it gradually refines your sensibility and transforms
your way of being in the world. Most fundamentalism, greed, violence, and
oppression can be traced back to the separation of idea and affection.
The anam
cara perspective is sublime
because it permits us to enter this unity of ancient belonging.
O’Donohue
borrows Aristotle’s notion of friendship and stretches it to a more expansive
understanding:
A
friend is a loved one who awakens your life in order to free the wild
possibilities within you.
[…]
The
one you love, your anam
cara, your soul friend, is the truest mirror to reflect your soul. The
honesty and clarity of true friendship also brings out the real contour of your
spirit.
Anam
Cara is a soul-stretching
read in its entirety, exploring such immutable human concerns as love, work,
aging, and death through the timeless lens of ancient Celtic wisdom. Complement
it with poet and philosopher David Whyte on the
true meaning of friendship, love, and heartbreak, then treat yourself to
O’Donohue’s magnificent On Being conversation with Krista Tippett — one of the last
interviews he gave before his sudden and tragic death.
If
you realize how vital to your whole spirit — and being and character and mind
and health — friendship actually is, you will take time for it… [But] for so
many of us … we have to be in trouble before we remember what’s essential… It’s
one of the lonelinesses of humans that you hold on desperately to things that
make you miserable and … you only realize what you have when you’re almost about
to lose it.
Maria
Popova is a cultural curator and curious mind at large, who also writes for
Wired UK, The Atlantic and Design Observer, andis
the founder and editor in chief of Brain Pickings (which offers a free weekly
newsletter).
Be The Change: We often take
our near ones for granted. Today forge a deeper bond with a friend or loved
one.
