There is a woman in my life — I will call her N. — whom I have known since we were eleven. We met in a school in Hay Hassani, in a French class, on a Wednesday I can still picture exactly. I remember what she was wearing, which is not something I usually remember. I remember that she did not laugh at the things the other girls were laughing at, and that I noticed this and decided immediately that she was someone worth knowing.
We are now thirty-eight and thirty-nine, respectively, and she is the closest thing to a teacher I have on this earth.
What N. teaches me
N. is not a yoga teacher. She is not a therapist, an osteopath, a healer of any kind. She is a paediatric nurse who works long shifts in a public hospital and who has, for as long as I have known her, possessed an unshakable, almost embarrassing capacity to be present.
When I am anxious, she does not try to fix me. She listens, in a way that is clearly not waiting for her turn to speak.
When I am wrong about something — which happens often — she tells me, gently, with an arm on my shoulder, and waits while I argue with her. She does not need to win.
When I am unable to make a decision, she asks me, what would you tell me to do if I were in your situation? And I always know the answer, and I always laugh, and I always do the thing.
When I have been a poor friend, which has happened more times than I am proud of, she does not punish me. She also does not pretend it did not happen. She makes a small remark, and waits to see if I will take responsibility, and when I do she lets it go.
The teachers in my life have not been the ones who knew the most. They have been the ones who knew how to stay.
What I have failed to learn from her
I am writing this honestly, because I do not want to make her into a saint. She is not. I have failed to learn from her many times.
She is patient with people, and I am still not. She does not need to be admired, and I sometimes still do. She is happy with a smaller life than I have wanted. She does not perform her wisdom on the internet, and the fact that I am writing about her at all would be embarrassing to her if she ever found this page, which she will not, because she does not read blogs.
I am writing this letter to say: the teachers in our lives are not always our teachers. Sometimes they are friends. Sometimes they are the woman who has been beside you since you were eleven, who has not changed her core self in any way that matters, while you have spent thirty years rearranging yours.
What I do with this
When I sit with the women in my circles, and I am tempted to perform — to give wisdom, to fill silence, to seem helpful — I sometimes ask myself, what would N. do?
The answer is almost always the same. She would say nothing. She would put a hand on the woman's shoulder. She would wait.
This is the practice. This is the entire practice, on most days.
✦
If you have a friend like N. in your life, I would gently encourage you to tell her — not in a letter she will be embarrassed by, but in a small remark, the next time you see her. You have taught me how to be a person. Or whatever your equivalent is. Say it once, and then never again, so that she does not feel observed.
The friends who are also teachers do not want to be thanked. They want to be received. Receive yours, while you have her.
— Ghizlan