“Don’t we all just wish to be known and to be loved?” my friend Brooke asked me over coffee. I was taken aback when I was struck with the truth in my friend's words. She left me to reflect more on her words of truth as I came to the realization that with everything we do, everything we say, we all have the ulterior motive to be known and, consequently, to be loved. We strive for this goal, often hiding behind other things, other questions. Think of every question you ask another, from “How are you?” to “Where are you from?” or “What did you do today?” We want to know because our interactions with others are a cause for reciprocation. Knowing another individual is a mutual action and in searching and rather yearning to know another, you yourself will become known; because for every “How are you?” you ask, you are most likely going to receive one in return. Intimacy from a friendship is the mere result of self-disclosure, of revealing ourselves to someone else. And by self-disclosure I don’t simply mean revealing what you ate for lunch that day, but I mean the truth. The truth of who you are... who you truly are inside. As we discover more about others and they discover more about us in turn, we reach a point of mutual intimacy and, in a sense, we can honestly say that we know them... and in knowing we can eventually come to loving.

As we yearn to be heard, to be known and eventually to be loved, we can look to see the intentional nature of our relationships. I guess you could say that because this desire lies at the heart of everyone, there is a mutuality in our encounters, a mutuality to discover. Curiosity is born within us and is most fully expressed in our relationships with others. In other words, you could say that by acknowledging this mutuality at the start of a relationship one can have a more fruitful and honest connection because both parties have the same ultimate goal. We carry on with our friendships and relationships feeling fulfilled when we finally find someone who knows us through and through, who we know, who we see. This desire we have, however, is vicious and toxic because it invades our thoughts and our hearts, our actions become obsessed with this desire and we can slowly see it mirrored in our relationships. This honesty and intentionality spreads like wildfire - simply through its desire to find in a friendship an oasis to quench it. To find in another an oasis, to be safe in another who knows you, is never a feeling we can fully have; there will always be a part of ourselves that we keep. Maybe it’s because we are fearful, even though this contrasts our brazen search to quench our fires, we still have fears that even when we are known it is still not complete. For there truly is only one that can fully know, one that makes us feel known and fully and intentionally loved to the extent that we can only fractionally reciprocate. Even a multitude of sweet friends and loyal confidants cannot compare to this force of love and knowledge. For there is always another that is greater, but this doesn’t need to diminish our search for someone nearer, someone on this earth that can suffice ‘for now’ until we can come closer to better knowing the one who knows us wholly and completely.