A “relationship” in this day and age can range from an acquaintance to a love affair, from kinship to friendship, from affinity to intimacy, from cognizance to conversance. From recognition to affection.

But the heart knows better than that.

The heart knows that there are many things that posture as relationships which, if put to the test, disappear like dew on summer grass. It’s what does not disappear when darkness comes that really affects our lives. Consistency, understanding, and fidelity distinguish a relationship from an association. It is those things of which a relationship is made.

The differences between them are, in the end, relatively easy to tell. Consistency, understanding, and fidelity are of the essence.

There is some degree of consistency that makes a relationship real. Good friends have a way of being there—not daily, perhaps, but certainly when life demands their presence most. When their presence alone can bring meaning to the moment, they are always there.

Only real friends can understand the depth of the pain and bring relief. They do not come as gawkers at a tragedy. They are at its center, bringing its balm, its comfort, its anodyne. It is understanding itself that divides the pain, makes grief possible. In front of my friend, there is no need to lie, to hold up like plastic on a stick, to press down the very emotion that is at this time the only proof of the life that’s left in us.

Finally, if the relationship is real, then fidelity itself will make the companionship that follows it through both darkness or light, pain or outrageous joy, possible. Relationship takes loneliness away, makes abandonment impossible, promises life in the midst of death because the heart and the strength of the other enables us to face it.

—from Two Dogs and a Parrot: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Meaning of Life by Joan Chittister (BlueBridge)