Appreciating the Whole

It took me a while to puzzle out what Hans Christian Anderson meant by this week's quote: "Wenn man sich von den Bergen entfernt, so erblickt man sie erst recht in ihrer wahren Gestalt; so ist es auch mit den Freunden."

Which being roughly translated, means: "When you are far away from the mountains, you can see them in their true forms, this is also true of friends."

I understand the first half easily - when you see a mountain from far off, you can see its beauty and majesty as a whole. Whereas if you are closer to it, or even climbing up it, it's difficult to appreciate the whole of it. Especially, perhaps, when you think you're getting near the top, and you come to what you thought was the horizon, and there is another long bit to climb.

There are so many different ways of interpreting the second half. It could mean that you only appreciate your friends when they're not around, or when you've lost their friendship. Or it could mean that when you're away from them, you miss them.

But I think it means that it is often difficult to appreciate your friends as individual human beings, as whole people, when they are close to you, inter-connected with you, involved in your life. And that sometimes, we need to make the effort to see them objectively, to insert that little distance between ourselves and them, in order to understand them clearly. And not to impose our own thoughts and feelings on them.

Perhaps it is only when we are at a (little) distance to our friends that we can see them whole, and truly appreciate them as unique, precious children of God.