How do you recognize an ally?
Many have asked me this in recent weeks. We have, after all, moved past the time of solitude, and this is the time of alliances.
Who are the allies? Allies are those who share with you sensibilities, vision, and priorities. Their embodiment is dedicated to the same goal as yours, and their desire is to share time and energy to achieve it. They are a few souls, but perceiving them, finding them, recognizing them will always be essential: together, you are greater, more powerful, in service to each other.
Sensibility, vision, priorities: these are the keys by which to recognize an ally.
Sensibility means that your allies share with you a certain way of being alive and perceiving the world around them. You have been swept up by a current that asks you to be free, authentic, to break down every hypocrisy, every law that limits your right to be who you are. You will recognize each other because when the moment comes when everyone doubts you, you will be the ones ready to open the dance with a knowing glance. And you will dance side by side: together because you have similar hearts, together because you live with a spirit different from the majority of others.
And then you recognize an ally through a second key: vision. Having a vision does not always mean having clarity about where you want to go; sometimes it is simply about perceiving clearly that “something is calling us.” The current is taking you somewhere, to the same destination, and you understand it more and more each day. There is no calculation, no strategy: you are meant to create a certain future, a certain humanity, a certain world, one step at a time.
I left priorities for last because it is the rarest, perhaps the most distinctive trait of an ally. Priorities mean that for a true ally, being an ally is more important than anything else. It is a flame that burns now, warms the heart, and cannot afford to postpone that “yes” any longer: every molecule of their being passionately desires it. A true ally will not tell you they are ready and then disappear.
A true ally, when they are ready, will be so until the end.
A fiery embrace.
