"Always a pleasure."

The unquantifiable value of friends.

When I left the pub tonight I said to my mate Henry, almost without thinking, “always a pleasure.”

“Never a chore.” he replied, not missing a beat.

The things we take lightly are the best things. A few hours of calm. A beer or more, and bright, colourful banter. Catching up on what we’ve done, what we’re doing, or just appreciating the shared time we’ve experienced on this grand, circling, magma-filled rock-encrusted ball we call the Earth.

We’re born to see just the few hundred yards ahead of us, and to taste what we taste, hear what we hear, and feel what we feel. The improbable nature of the vaster universe is understood in the abstract only - always once removed. We comprehend it through fiction, analogy and science. We sense it, but we’re only mortals. To feel we truly know it would be a kind of hubris. But we embrace it nonetheless.

It’s in these moments of companionship where life grounds us, and the touchstone that proffers grants us the truest insight into what it is to be human. To care, and to love. It’s when art, and music, and the things we make become transcendental. Where what unites us takes on its own life.

These are, in the moment, small things. But take a beat… and it’s a kind of magic.

I love my friends. Truly and deeply. They gift me the respite my questing heart craves. They soften the sharp edges of a brutal world. They dim the noise. And they give me hope.

The hope that in the simple fact of us just being here - now, in this time, this age - we might actually recognize the beauty in the most paired-back and simple aspects of humanity. And that that will, somehow, outweigh all of the crueler aspects of our species - the conflicts, war, greed, power, anger, brutality, and intolerance. That the bonds we make might just, with a little hope, lead us into a future where the darkness and hate is superseded.

I confess, I’ve had a few beers. I’ve been with friends and family that I love, so I’m touched by the afterglow of companionship and the welcome intimacy of all that entails. It’s a fine antidote to the troubling times we are all sharing. I don’t trust humanity as a block to be wise or fair. But in these brief, human moments I’m given some peace of mind - for a fleeting moment at least.

I love my friends, my family. And I deeply appreciate those that know a bit of me through my efforts as a writer and artist. I’m untrusting of our species when it comes to the betterment and care of our global community, and even the planet itself. But I hope that the bonds we make in our lived lives eventually enlighten us enough to appreciate how brief, and precious, our flickering, fragile moment on this tiny island, Earth, truly is. And that one day we’ll be wise enough to want only the best for every peaceful soul thrust into the stark, unlikely precarity of this waking life.