Where has all the poker gone?

True wealth can not be found in your bank account.
It can only be found in those you call friend.
Those with whom you share your deepest feelings.
And those who accept you for who you really are. - Mary Vandergrift

How many people do I call friend yet with whom don't share my deepest feelings, who don't accept me for who I really am, but that I treat more like a value to be deposited in a bank account?

It often surprises me, who my friends are, after taking a deliberate look every once in a while...

They can be found at home, in the person with whom you rarely sit rather than the person with whom you frequently play. Within the group of friends: the person who grounds you, calms your energy, chooses their own words carefully and brings forth your profound thoughts, rather than the person who charges your air, who beckonds your company, who is there at the drop of a hat. Within a person who might outwardly seem like with whom you would have much less in common than with a person closer in age, your same sex, with a similar lifestyle, who shares your current lifestage.

And of course their are those friends who simultaniously appear to be the friend and who truly fit the definition. And there are those people who appear to fit the definition yet don't only because you don't let them enter that deap honesty of your being. And while there is much to be gained by letting many more into that space, I too believe there must be some benefit to keeping some people in your life as simple playmates. Who do we choose to be friends and why? Who do we let stay around that exterior bubble? Do we always have a choice in the matter, as an individual and as participants in a pair of people sharing an experience? Who's bubble are you within, yet they remain outside your own? Who have you welcomed in, yet might rest outside their exterior?

A night planned around a game of poker with some friends, some aquaintences with who we bounce happily off eachothers bubbles like atoms who frequently encounter eachother, touch, bounce, exchange energy, bouce again, turned into a nearly 4 hour conversation with two friends. Friends. I let them in, they let me in: both much diferently, of course...due to our joint histories, our energies, our life situations. But we let eachother in. And, for me, for whom its less familiar a thing to do, less natural than for many others...it is good practice, and a gift to myself, of course, and I, and we all, must believe, truly, a gift to the others as well.