Friendship vs. Enmity:
This is one of my favorite lines from Hafez. It’s simple, but deeply profound. That we need to spend our lives nourishing the positives in our friendships, while when negative toxins come our way, it is also up to us to unpluck them in their very earliest of stages.
These Olympics showed that sports is about people. That when you put 2 giants of Freestyle Wrestling together, they will compete with “friendship” and hug each other afterwards. That the real human condition looks very different to the manufactured, politicized one we are force fed 24/7 on TV. I guess we’ll have to wait another 4 years for scenes like this – but thought some of you would enjoy this photo as much as I did.
HAFEZ:
Plant the tree of Friendship and watch it bring your heart’s joy and success
Unpluck the sapling of Enmity and root out all distress
درخت دوستی بنشان که کام دل به بار آرد
نهال دشمنی بر کن که رنج بی شمار آرد
Here’s to all of us directing most of our energies on nurturing friendships, while not allowing enmity to even grow, and taking Hafez’s advice about unplucking it before the sapling becomes a tree.
