FINDING ELEPHANTS

A few months ago, a friend posted this video on Facebook, featuring an elephant and a dog who had become best friends as they spent time at an elephant habitat in Tennessee (of all places!). The video opened by stating that the elephants on this elephant sanctuary (all female) seemed to arrive and immediately seek out a buddy to whom they could relate. They would eventually find a friend and the pair would be great friends for the duration of their stay.

It got me thinking about friendships and transience and how to coordinate the two through the moves I’ve made, and will make, in my life. It’s a question I get a lot from friends who cannot understand a life without staying in one place and weaving themselves into a community. “How can you stand it?” they ask. “Don’t you miss home?” I do. I absolutely do. I miss having my friends and loved ones in my everyday life. But I also enjoy the clean slate of moving to a new place, and the opportunities and the people I will find there.

As a new elephant to the sanctuary, I come with the sum of my experiences to a place where I frequently know no one (save Hubbz). Sometimes the terrain is as unfamiliar as it must be to an elephant arriving from Africa to a meadow in Tennessee! It can be tough and it can take awhile – but eventually, without fail, I find a soul I can relate to, and then things seem to just fall into place. (I must add that so far, I've been EXTREMELY lucky and managed to find truly amazing friends).

If that person is also transient – and especially in a place like Germany – there’s an unspoken knowledge that eventually, we’ll both carry on to another new place and we’ll find new elephant friends who anchor us and share our new place experiences with us. We may lose touch over the years, but for now, I know that I will absolutely be there if she needs an instant favor –and she will be the first girlfriend I want to call when something ridiculous happens in the neighborhood. So that's how we do it.  One elephant at a time….or a dog…apparently that will work also :)