Peace, Not Happiness

Never let go of someone in whose presence you need hide nothing of yourself, need change nothing. The person before whom you can unfold exactly as you are—that is the right person for you. Whoever can make you feel unashamed about anything—your past, your present—only they have the power to truly keep you well. Seek no further than the one for whom your weakest moments are safe, who never ridicules even your worst decisions.

Call them friend—the person who accepts you in your most disheveled state, who receives your exposed wounds without flinching, and chooses to live alongside you anyway. You need not dress yourself up before them; there is peace in meeting their eyes. They are friend enough to tolerate your childishness, to listen earnestly to your strangest tales, to never tire of your difficult moods. A partner, yes—you can find one easily. But a true friend? Never easily. Why does marriage hold so much sorrow? Because people slip into being husband or wife with such ease, yet never—not in a lifetime—become friends. Only to a friend can you tell everything, show everything. Only before a friend can you lay bare all your weakness and shadow. If you have found such a friend, the world's indifference cannot touch you.

You can tell well enough who desires only your body. If you desire the same, so be it. But if you do not, then returning to them again and again is simply pushing yourself deeper into suffering. Others dig your grave after you die; you dig it yourself before. One who is perpetually killing themselves cannot easily be saved by another.

Seek not the happy person, but the one of authentic soul. That is perhaps the hardest thing to find in this world. If you should ever find such a person, hold them with your life. To love someone real is far more peaceful than to be the false spouse or lover of someone hollow. In the end, people do not wish to live in love or even in being loved. They wish only to live in peace.