Friday, January 7, 2011

Make New Friends... But Keep the Old

Friends and friendships.  We don’t always take the time to think about them.  Over the holidays, I’ve been thinking about friends and why we remain friends with certain people and not others.  Perhaps to have good friends, we also need to be a good friend.

Friends see us through all of life’s events – the major ones like love, birth and death – as well as smaller events.

How do we become friends?  We start off by sharing something in common – a dorm room; recognizing at a public event that we share similar views and seeking that person out; the commitment to helping people; or just by having fun together.  These small sparks are carefully tended and over time grow into the flame of friendship.

Sometimes, these small sparks of friendship become dormant for many years, but then can burst into the full flame of friendship once again.  Over the holidays, I was spending time with a friend and we were discussing friendship.  She told me that she recently attended a 55-year reunion of her Brownie troop!  And they all visited their Brownie leader.  What’s amazing is that these women had not really maintained contact throughout all of these years.  However, all it took was a puff of air, blowing on the dormant sparks of friendship, for it to bloom again.  They realized that their shared experiences as Brownies really were the foundation for a long-time friendship.  My friend also told me that she should have reached out to them earlier.  It doesn’t take much to maintain friendships – just keeping in contact.

My friends are scattered around the world.  We’re friends because of shared experiences – school, work, and Girl Scouts.  Facebook and email make it so much easier to stay in touch; to celebrate life’s events and to help each other through the tough times.

So as we go about our busy lives, let’s resolve this year to take time to remember old friends.  But also, make new friends.  Who knows, maybe you’ll meet someone who shares your passion for female detective novels!

No comments:

Post a Comment