With Friends Like These.......

Friendship is a funny thing. It can lift you up and break your heart. It is putting yourself, your soul out for others to take in their hands and do with it as they will. It is to give up control of how you are as an individual at times, because you become part of this pair, this group, that clique. Friendship is surrendering your dreams, fears, and desires unto another in the hope that they will help you achieve your dreams, calm your fears, and feel as passionate about your desires. There are friends that you will have a lifetime, who know everything about you, and with whom a conversation continues through time as if you had never stopped talking. There are friends that never reach the innermost recesses of your heart, but yet you share an ease and a companionship all the same, and there are also friend’s day or night, good or bad, you can depend on or call on for anything. I am fortunate enough to have some of each.

I have never been one that was really good at making friends. In reality, I have 10 people who I consider friends in the sense that I talk with them frequently, I trust them, and I feel that for the most part they “get me”. Oh sure, I talk with other people, we are friendly and when the circumstance presents itself through work or other means, we hang out and socialize. But, I don’t call them to go to lunch or sit up with them drinking coffee until 2 am and completely ignore the time either. But lately, I have been pondering my friendships. Not in the sense that I would want to end any, more from the perspective of my place in the relationship and what it means. Does my friendship mean as much to them as theirs does to me? There is this secret that exists, what else do I or didn’t I know about? Do they really know me as I feel that I don’t know them? And so on.

One thing that really started me down this path is a book I read recently and in it a Japanese man and a French woman become friends. He is really only her second friend as everyone else treats her like a second class peasant. One night she gets all dressed up and they go to dinner, the other people in the building acknowledge him, but ignore her. She says “They didn’t recognize me” and he says “that is because they have never seen you. I would recognize you anywhere”.

I wonder how often that we do that with our friends, and even our family. How often do we not see them, really see them for who they are. And how often are we overlooked because the relationship is comfortable and the really seeing someone seems no longer necessary. I, for one, will make a stronger effort to see and listen, whether my friends are a block away or across the oceans.