Matching luggage

It’s funny how dinner with an old friend can always help to remind you of the things that are important in life.

This evening served to remind me that in order to love and be loved it is important to be honest. No relationship, whatever its status, can be truly valued if it is shrouded in ‘little white lies’. If there is ever a need to withhold a part of oneself, then actually that friendship is worth precious little. If you feel a need to hide things from another then you are either being dishonest to them or yourself, and I don’t know about you, but either way if anyone is dishonest to me it amounts to disrespect, and disrespect should mean ‘adios’.

We all have baggage, and I once read that love means not only making room for someone else’s baggage but also helping them unpack. And actually I think this is very true. But what if they insist on carrying around their baggage, never unpacking but simply using it as a prop, then what? Can love in any shape, even platonic, actually be worth anything if there is dishonesty?

Having a little person in your life makes you look at all your relationships a little differently: you realise that there is little room for anything that distracts you being a happy stable influence on your little one; you want to shield her from the flotsam and jetsam of life, and just let her be shrouded in pure love. Now a life free of dishonesty may not be realistic but surely it should be a goal.

I want Isobel to be confident to be loved for her flaws as well as her perfection and to always expect respect.

Perhaps this is a lesson I need to teach myself first.