The Road to Ensenada

Listen to your heart that beats
And follow it with both your feet
And as you walk and as you breathe
You ain't no friend of me
You ain't no friend of me
You ain't no friend of me

Lyle Lovett’s haunting lyrics broke through the fog in my head this morning while I was waking up. It’s a hard lesson to learn, to know who your friends are. And it’s an even harder act to deal with people who you thought were your friends, people who told you they were your friends and you believed them. Who knows: maybe they really believed it themselves. Maybe they didn’t mean to lie; they couldn’t help themselves. Maybe they needed a friend themselves.

It’s not an easy thing, for me at least, to write people off. Some people can discard people as easily as taking out the garbage. Like they’re throwing garbage overboard, off a boat. Never look back, and the person sinks beneath the waves and under the water forever while the other person blithely and happily sails on their merry way. I can’t do that.

But we have to protect ourselves. There’s no such thing as a friend who doesn’t want something in return. A friendship is a selfish thing.

I think friends are like lovers, and the best ones not only make us better people, but together two friends can make the world a better place. In the same way a quarterback leads a receiver with a pass, throwing the ball not to where the receiver is at the time of the release of ball, but where the receiver will be when the ball arrives, friends—real friends—take us where we want to be. Where we should be. Where we were born to be.