“To Have a Friend Be a Friend”
Moving is hard on many levels but I think the thing that has been hardest about my move to Cleveland three years ago was leaving so many long time friends and coming to a place where the only person I knew was Tom. Friends are important. So important in fact that several books have been written about Friendship in the past several months.
“Friend” is defined as a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard, a supporter. Friendship is the state of BEING a friend. Being is an ACTIVE verb NOT a passive one. It indicates doing, motion, action. And herein lies the rub. How many of us know how to be a friend and actually act on it.
There are several reasons this blog topic has come up today. First of all I have recently become friends with a person who, strangely enough, lives back in my old hometown. I knew her only slightly when I lived there, as a teacher each of my children had and enjoyed, at some point in their secondary educational years. We were sort of introduced again by my son who maintained contact with this teacher and turned it into an adult friendship on his return to Ohio. So through him we have become better acquainted. Our commonality was my son and the book he has written. That was how we really connected. Now we e-mail frequently and when I went back to Granville recently we met for coffee. This new friendship has become an important part of my life as we get to know one another and it will need to be nourished. Neither of us seem to lack for words so an e-mail friendship has been easy to establish. We also have several areas of interest in common and a similar background, all important in a friendship.
The second reason is something that happened this weekend. As I’ve mentioned in the past Tom and I enjoy the symphony. We enjoy inviting friends to attend with us and often have extra tickets to give to them. It’s so enjoyable, at least for us when we see these people. This weekend our guest was unable to go and we weren’t able to find a replacement. Somehow this brought to mind an issue that may sound really petty when I bring it up but according to everything I’ve read about friendship is important. It seems like we are always the ones to do the asking. If we didn’t invite them or call them, we would never see or talk to most of these people. They never reciprocate. I don’t mean they have to take us someplace or give us tickets or buy us meals in restaurants. I mean we never hear from them and are never invited to spend time with them . They never take the initiative. So one starts to think – Hmmmm, are we really “friends” or just “friends of convenience for when there is nothing better to do when THEY (meaning us) call.” We would just like to spend time with friends. That’s what friends do. They make time for each other. They check in with each other. They want to know what is happening in one another’s life.
The third reason for writing this is GUILT. I have not been a good friend to several people I really cared (reason for past tense here will be explained later) and care about. I have a friend in California. We have been friends for 30 + years. She and her husband were friends with my husband and me in Alaska while stationed in the Air Force. We spent almost every weekend together. They are my daughter’s godparents. Then they moved, as Air Force families are often forced to do every couple of years. We stayed in touch. We went to California. They came to Ohio. We kept track of each other’s kids’ growing pains. Then somehow I got busy with a career, a divorce, new challenges. Janet kept writing faithfully every month, even when months would go by without a reply from me. She still does. She always ends her letters with a request for me to PLEASE WRITE ! She reminded me before Christmas it had been almost a year since I had written and she wanted to know how I was and what I’d been up to. She wasn’t trying to make me feel guilty. She truly was interested in my life. That’s how friends are. As I read her letters I realize we are getting older and that sooner rather than later one of us will no longer be around. I need to fix this and be a better friend before she is gone.
This brings me to the sentence above where I mentioned people I “really CARED about.” I had a very good friend who became very ill about 4 years ago. We, when I lived in Newark, would go for coffee together, we took dance lessons from the same instructor and shared that interest, we went shopping – all the things good friends do. As her illness progressed I continued to see her but it became more difficult. I was in the middle of a lot of change in my life, changes that eventually led to me moving here. That is NO EXCUSE. At a time this person needed me most I wasn’t there for her and now she is gone. She died a year ago without me seeing her again. This is not how to BE a friend.
How do you measure up? Are there people in your life you consider important? Consider a friend? Ask yourself when was the last time you reached out to them, took the time to catch up with them,to find out what’s going on in their life, to sit and have coffee or spend an afternoon or evening with them. Are you being the kind of friend you would like to have? It’s as easy as a phone call or carving out an afternoon on your schedule then calling to make plans. Send a card or a note just to let them know you are thinking of them. Who doesn’t love to get real mail? Friends enhance our health and well being because of the feeling of support and understanding it gives us. Are you that person to people you consider your “friends”?
Think about it.