Friendliness

A line from today's reading from C.S. Lewis caught my eye:

You could see that they were ready to be friends with anyone who was friendly, and didn’t give a fig for anyone who wasn’t. Shasta thought he had never seen anything so lovely in his life.

Here I sit, worrying over some frank emails I sent my supervisor (which as yet have received no response) over new "teaching" responsibilities (who knows, he's likely getting flack from too many instructors to respond to them all in a timely fashion) and my mood seems a thousand miles away from the one I began with upon reading those lines.

Those lines sum up a great freedom - these Narnians Shasta saw were not people who didn't care what other people thought because they because they didn't care about other people. They were friendly and open to friendship - they cared about others. But, they cared in a good way - a way without ego and fear and pride - in a friendly way. Sometimes it's very hard for me to see all the things that trap me as surely as the silken threads of a spider web - fear, pride, desire, etc. Friendliness need not come out of a need to be friended - people pleaser that I am, that's hard to grasp. Friendliness can come out of freedom - being friendly with others because they are loved as I am loved.