A Suitcase of Diamonds: Meditation on Friendship

Coming out of the holiday of Passover, which is a sojourn in itself, with a great deal of preparatory work, planning, and a wresting oneself out of the normal flow of time, I found myself thinking about my life in new ways. To say that I was thinking more freely isn’t just a pun; it’s a reality.

One thing I began to consider, in ways I hadn’t before, or at least not with the same intensity, is the value of friendship. Let me put that another way, since the word friendship, at least as many of us use it, isn’t quite the right word. I’ll call it intimacies. Unfortunately, the word intimacy has come to carry a largely sexual connotation, and as such it misses a broader and more important swath of meaning.

Intimacy, in this sense, is a particular sort of love, most often occurring within a marriage, and often obtained only after a long stretch of years, even decades, where one’s understanding of compromise, conciliation, and care takes on meanings different from what those words held at the beginning of the relationship. But now, I’m speaking more broadly, about these kinds of intimacies, including those we find in friendship, their worth, their value as we age, and perhaps especially now, when there is so much apprehension about the world.

At synagogue this week I began reading a section of a five-part work called “Likkutei Dibburim” by Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe and father-in-law to the seventh Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The collection, distinct from other Hassidic works, which are often highly detailed teachings on the nature of reality, the way a transcendent God intersects with the physical world, and other esoteric understandings, is a compendium of personal reflections. The section that caught my attention begins with a kind of remorse for what friendship had come to mean, compared to his youth in Ukraine in the late 1800s.

“The current acceptance of worldly notions has indeed introduced a certain order into the conduct of people’s lives, but with it a certain frigidity, a certain absence of truth, and occasionally a lie.”

Here he reflects on the ways people, perhaps because they were less distracted, or because of the dangers present at the time, lived in a way that allowed for greater honesty, and in which the perception of love was more tangible, more necessary.

“When two friends meet and kiss each other one sees the manifestation of a greater light of love than that expressed in a handshake. A yet higher manifestation may be observed in the long conversation in which good friends love to tell each other of all their experiences.

“Beyond this there is a kind of love so intense that words are too dry to express it: two friends in this state can simply stand and gaze at each other without uttering a word.

“These, then, are various ways in which friends express their love, the bond that brings them to oneness.”

After reading this, I’ll admit, I became quite emotional. I began to feel, in a way I hadn’t fully allowed myself before, that I am fortunate to know this feeling, that I have known this close, inexpressible love with many of my friends, both old and new. And what is its worth? How could I possibly appraise it? What has it given me, and what have these relationships given to those with whom I share this intimacy?

Freedom means many things, and something different to each person. But the freedom from unspeakable, existential loneliness, that which, on some level, every person must feel, is what may be most needed now. Aside from the basics of food and shelter, which so many around the world still lack, this, I think, is the resource most urgently required.

To see someone you love and to know you are loved in return, to know that you will be heard, seen, acknowledged on the deepest level, to “simply stand and gaze at each other without uttering a word,” this is the antidote to so much of our confusion and suffering.

Making such friends, even as children, requires courage, a courage that says: I am secure enough with myself to allow others in, to shed my defenses, to reveal my flaws and insecurities, to hold another person and to sense the sanctity of their being.

Very little of this is spoken about in our culture, this sort of love. It is nothing that can be marketed or sold. It is not brash or performative. It is made of humility, forged from the understanding that even with all our strengths, we desperately need one another.

“But there is also an inward bond, a bond of thought, through which one friend senses the other. Just as a person sees his friend who stands facing him near at hand, so it is with thought, which is not limited by distance.”

Thought is not limited by distance. It cannot be trapped or contained. Thoughts of love, of an irrepressible empathy for another, have a power beyond imagination.

Think for a moment: what would it be like if there were a suitcase of perfect diamonds in front of us, with a sign that read: Take as many as you need.

In truth, the diamonds are there — take as many as you need.

Peter Himmelman is a Grammy and Emmy nominated performer, songwriter, film composer, visual artist and award-winning author.