Mistletoe

The winter of 2019 was special. Sometime in early December of that year, I got a chance to see the Hillsong Christmas show and it was phenomenal. My friend Rea took me. We enjoyed it thoroughly, it was spiritual and I went home content. Being the first winter I was experiencing in my life, I looked forward to seeing snow but England was particularly adamant about leaving me without the experience, and the only day it snowed in Oxford, I was too lazy to get out and see it. Not that it snowed significantly so I still haven’t experienced a proper winter.

It was the same winter that I reconnected with Afa, my friend who I had not seen in nearly 10 years. Afa hosted me at his place in London twice that winter and I am the better for it. We talked about books, political ambition, and the days of our teens. It was that same winter that I reached a significant growth mile in my life – being able to tell someone I liked them and more so, handle the rejection well enough to keep our friendship even stronger. It was also that winter that my lover and I went out for what was meant to be a drink but morphed into a date but it was that same winter that my friend Rea walked out of my life.

At the moment that everything was happening, I just kept moving, doing what I thought was best in every situation but perhaps I was a terrible friend to Rea maybe not for the reasons that she might think but perhaps because I didn’t see that she was hurting. I have learnt over time that it helps to protect your interests but more so, we are called to a life of selflessness. Whether or not you are religious, I guarantee you do not like selfish people and so we all strive to be the selfless ones but sometimes we fail. The reason is simple, the concept of selflessness/ selfishness is subjective and we must be considerate of that. In the case of Rea, it eventually came to me that I considered her selfish for having not told me she had a lot going on and in doing so, I believed that I had done something to which she responded with her silence – in other words, I was upset that I was the offender but she hadn’t confronted me with my crimes. Perhaps she considered that not telling me what she was going through was an act of kindness, to spare me the burden of her woes. This simple miscommunication cost us a lifetime of amazing friendship because when she returned months later out of the blue, I was too hurt to engage.

Winter is cold and I don’t think anyone should have to do it alone. Our lives indeed are in seasons but unlike the weather, we cannot say when our winter will come so when it does come, it is our responsibility to ensure that we make our community know not to expect springtime harvests from us but maybe even that is selfish of me because it considers the winters that are like English winter of 2019 and not the disastrous winters of Canada which give you no room to see through the thick snow. If it is thick snow, just wait it out. You might lose something when spring comes but the winter will be over