my beautiful enemy

after a coffee meeting the other day, i went to a local book store to browse at what homegrown writers have been writing about. of the 20 or thirty titles that lined the shelf - one in particular stood out and has held me hostage for the last week. it's a thin book, no more than 120 pages.

"Heaven Can Wait - Conversations with Bonny Hicks" - is written by Tal Ben-Shahar who pulls together his correspondences with Bonny, a former model and writer who died just before she turned 30 in an airplane crash. the two are kindred spirits and found in each other a "beautiful enemy." They amplified each other's goodness and brilliance and were companions in their search for meaning and purpose in life. the book details the intensity and beauty when two kindred souls meet, two hungry minds meet with a common purpose of knowledge and the distillation of truth in life - as is revealed to them.

The wisdom, passion and compassion between these pages move me. they motivate me. Tal wrote the book as a testimony to the sacredness of his one-year friendship with this beautiful woman. it was also a form of catharsis for him.

and for me, vicariously. as it lays out the preamble for my own....

the urgency of life tugs and pulls me. to manifest, quickly....

for my beautiful enemy.


Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841)

Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighbourly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to that standard. That great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near. To my friend I write a letter, and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you a little. It suffices me. It is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give, and of me to receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the annals of heroism have yet made good.