The Bocage

A random act of kindness can create a spark between the mind and heart that activates the gut microbes, that then recalibrates the brain, so it synchronizes with a greater force.

Kat had needed to rent an apartment. Prices were increasing and affordable housing opportunities were decreasing. In desperation she asked her colleagues, expats who waiting to take a French oral exam at the local college, “Do any of you know of an apartment for rent?”

The die was cast. It was a crap shoot. Rolling a winning double, be it snakes’ eyes, or a Boxcar, is a matter of probability.

Richard unthinkingly joined the game saying, “I am just finishing renovating my place. Come and meet my girlfriend. She has the final say.”

By chance Fiona was home. They had tea together and chatted about how the apartment was lovely. Richard recounted how he had taken a home in shambles with ferns growing out of the basement walls and worked his magic. With flush of purpose and the insights of experience, he had transformed an ephemeral dream into reality, through herculean efforts.

Kat passed the test. She was offered the apartment. A change in action was initiated. It caused a domino effect.

With a meteoric flashing, into the thick of things from nobody knew where, the danger of homelessness and desperation, and the nervous dread of who knows what, removed mental and spiritual shackles of fear and uncertainty. There was an ecstatic speculation about the possibility of going through the portal to the seventh heaven, seeing Eden’s first splendorous dawn, and joining the limpid song of those living a charmed life.

Richard had simply recognized an opportunity had presented itself that was acceptable. The fact that it felt good to do what is right to help fellow man, when possible, was a bonus. This was not a random act of kindness; it was not a handout that was to be unreciprocated. The offer was a calculated bet of income. There was no latent belief in biblical references that any goodness given comes back tenfold.

Over the years, as Richard chosen mates came and went, Kat and Richard remained friends. Where and how that had started remained a mystery. Perhaps it was a natural consequence of both of them having met wanting to learn a new language. Both were following the quest for a new blend of an old romance, based on the unique combinations of love, from what the Greeks had described.

They shared Philo, the affectionate love of those who have shared struggles and ways of thinking. Ludus, playful love and respect, and Philautic, self-love, were essential. They had established Storge, familial love, that was balanced in favor of kindness and respect without the associated cruelty and resentment that often comes from sibling rivalry or mommy or daddy issues. Mania, a ruling obsession of the mind, was dangerous and best avoided. If the ephemeral hormonal passions of Eros' erotic love started to burn, it was redirected to Agape, the love that comes from acceptance, forgiveness and trust of the human condition, that is required in universal connections.

Perhaps it was old-fashioned guilt or long-term cellular memory, but Richard respected that sexual intimacy wields great power. While talking one day, Richard shared his belief. “The world is run by female choice, in which women can alter male behaviour because they can withhold sex.”

Richard appreciated when Kat said “This is a current male-dominated theory. Most men test the limits of physical possibilities as opportunities. They are unaware of the long term elusive emotional needs of a female that are, in truth, often based on a fictional reality of a prince charming who will protect and save them from life’s threatening monsters. I prefer to tint such romantic allure with a long-term pragmatic reality that balances the human need for another’s support, while accepting the limits of emotional variations.”

That conversation helped Richard understand the unspoken contract of their friendship. It was translated as having a friendship without the fear and hurt that can follow when emotional intimacy becomes confused with physical intimacy.

That random act of kindness years ago had led to both Richard and Kat discovering a spirit, that becomes inset into the prosaic course of everyday life. Within each person, there is a composite blend of personalities as defined by culture. Saint or sinner, philosopher or fool, and angel or demon, have little to do with elusive concepts of religion. When viewed with indifference, these images simply identify the choices that individuals make with themselves, in a deal that costs the price of the soul. The devil holds the threat of trapping the soul in the cavernous darkness of a personal hell. The angel faces the constant threat of the soul falling from the light of paradise. From somewhere within the chasm between these two concepts, the two friends followed the echoes of a sustainable wave that led along a path of least resistance, to a waterfall. It was a testament to strange coincidences that Nature often reveals.

The most peculiar coincidence was that Richard was the third cousin of Kat’s childhood friend in Canada. Their great-grandfathers were brothers, separated by some 25 years. The eldest had moved from England and died in Canada before the younger was born.

Kat questioned, “Do you think some latent programming let me identify something that is shared between you two men, my best friends? What really has shaped our paths?”

Richard, always the skeptic of such concepts, could only say, “We have witnessed a rare probability of what is and what might be.”

The friends realized that masterful man is not simply a plaything of destiny. They accept and fulfill the role they think fate has ordained, until they can do no more, then fate happens. Perhaps fate had dictated how each had found their true self and each other.

The friends had looked within the mist of possibility, and seen a fleeting glimpse of an ideal, from some other existence, in some other sphere, Unscathed, they had found a way to go behind the invading torrents of the grand river and realize the potential of timelessness that can exist in a brief slice of eternity.

Over the years, the friends stayed connected, made all the easier by communications moving the speed of light. They arranged regular visits. This year they were walking along the bocage that runs through the vast forests of Normandy. Majestic trees joined in a mystic communion in the crisp autumn morning mellow stillness. Looking over the fields, a glimpse at an infinite serenity spread over a great shimmering sea, formed by dense dew drops on the tips of each blade of vegetation reflecting the sun.

The enchanted forest had seen many a dream and nightmare. Here the Allied Forces got bogged down in the battle of the hedgerows. Each day they were losing hundreds of men due to the stealthy tactics of the stubborn enemy. The way out was to use an integrated approach, with the allied bomber command blasting their way through to avoid fighting through the hedgerows where they were vulnerable to losing infantry and tanks. It worked. The Allied forces used ingenuity, flexibility, innovation and cooperation to coordinate various a means to fight invisible enemy behind the impregnable tree lined rows.

The war had ended in Normandy and now, as the two walked the stopped and watching the chickens strut and Normandy adolescent cows feed on the grass, frolic, then sleep, the two appreciated how the war of sexual tensions between them also had ended. In their commitment to cultivating pragmatic love, using reason without delusion, they had found something more.

The random act of kindness that Richard had extended, without self-sacrifice, had come back to both of them tenfold. The two had created a blend of inscrutable love, that let them appreciate the rare quality of sincerity. It had led to finding peace not shackled to the clay of iniquity, with themselves, each other and the universe.