I’m just full of old, tried (or maybe tired) and true sayings today. In addition to “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold” there’s “No man (woman) is an island.”
And the great 60s classic….”I get by with a little help from my friends.” And then there’s the important advice, “To have good friends, be a good friend.”
Over the years, especially if you move a lot, you collect a lot of people you call friends. Considering the current state of technology, staying in touch with those friends can be super easy. Technology shrinks distance almost as much as teleportation, which, as my readers know, I am anxiously anticipating.
There are several “classes” of friends in each of our lives. Randy and I have seven or eight (mainly) couples we call Forever Friends. These are folks we’ve been close to, primarily in our Air Force years, who we now see infrequently, but with whom time and distance simply melt away like it never existed. We pick up where we left off, as if we left off just yesterday.
Other “classes” are work friends, church friends, activity friends, location friends, and interest friends. These are people with whom you hang out in the place you met them, but almost never see them or do anything with them outside of the original meeting place.
Then of course, most of us have Social Media friends, sometimes even hundreds of them. We call them friends, but honestly, you wouldn’t recognize some of them if you walked past them on the street. It’s fun to interact with a lot of people on-line (most of the time) but social media friends are quite superficial, no matter what deep, dark secrets you share with them on-line. The social media friends that matter started out as friends in another class in your life.
Then there are close friends, those who know everything about you and still love you anyway. These can be long-time friends or new friends, and you generally know they will have the potential to become close friends within minutes of meeting them.
There is a woman here in Florida who almost instantly became a close friend. We met when she bought some furniture from us on Facebook Marketplace. She’s one of those people who radiate joy and gratitude, and it seems we both knew right from the start how important our friendship could be to each other. She made an effort to contact me after the transaction to thank me and I made the effort to ask her to meet us for an adult beverage to “swap stories.” In a very short time she became one of our closest friends.
Maintaining friendship, as in any other important relationship, takes effort.
To ensure that my long-time close friends know how important they remain to me, even after the move to Florida, I have regular, recurring appointments set in my calendar (with reminders) to touch bases with them via video chat. I had a Forever Friend say to me recently, “I wish we’d talk more often.” So we set up an appointment every two weeks to catch up and discuss what’s going on in each other’s lives. I talk to some of these friends weekly, some bi-weekly, some monthly. But I make a real effort to be regular about it.
With one high-school friend, both of us kind of nerdy counter-culture types back then, our friendship is nurtured with snail-mail letters. We do make a point to get together in person when I’m back in Wisconsin, but there’s virtually no electronic communication between us. Good old fashioned, hand-written letters are our communication method of choice. Who doesn’t love to get a letter in the mail?
I’m always on the look-out for new friend opportunities. I bought a book a few weeks ago at a local used bookstore. In the front cover was a label for a woman whose address was just a few blocks from where Randy grew up in Green Bay! I did what every tech-savvy newly-retired person with too much time on their hands does…I looked her up on Facebook. Lo and behold, she now lives in the same subdivision we do! I sent her a message asking if she wants to get together for an adult beverage and to “swap stories.” (Hey, it worked pretty well last time I asked!) She agreed that would be fun so I’m waiting to hear from her when and where would be convenient. Sometimes these things work out and sometimes they don’t, but it’s entertaining to meet new people and hear how they came to be here in Florida, even if we won’t ever cross paths again.
Just last week I had lunch with a woman who both redesigned our kitchen and our lives in that she was instrumental in Randy and me starting these blogs. She recently retired and I wanted to get to know her a little better. There seemed to be good friend potential there. We could have talked for hours the afternoon of the lunch, but I was limited because sister Lisa was at my house waiting to go to the beach. I think, however, that MR will be one of my most important friends in the years to come and I’m excited about how that friendship will flower.
The point is: friendship is an action word. Friends lift each other up, encourage each other to be the best they can be, and provide support and unconditional love in times when it’s needed the most. Friends tell truth in ways that make it clear they can disagree but still love. And true friends will never lead or accompany you on the path to hell.
My friends–you know who you are–I’m grateful for you!
P.S. A word of advice….if you have people in your life you call friends, but who suck the life and energy out of you, rethink whether you really want those people on your island. It’s hard to kick them off your island, but how peaceful might your life be if you do?
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