Blog 99 – 8.20.15

I have heard more than one person remark: “I have enough friends.” It is, I think, impossible to have too many friends. And how sad indeed it must be to outlive all your family and friends. Someone has said, and I agree, that friends are the family we get to choose. The only way to be sure you don’t out live all your friends is to continually be making new ones.

I heard a little boy say one time to his rather relationship challenged grandmother who had just said she had a hard time making new friends: “Oh, it’s easy to make friends. All you have to do is act friendly.” The secret to making and keeping friends is no secret. It is known to children – just act friendly. Even when you don’t feel particularly friendly, act friendly. When a friend calls late at night to ask a favor or needs to just cry on your shoulder and you feel more like sleeping than lending a hand or offering a listening ear – act friendly. It is what friends do, they act like they care even when they don’t feel like caring. It takes some effort to be there for someone else but the reward is people who will return the favor, who will be your friend in return.

The old adage, “A friend in need is a friend in deed.” is true. The poor and the needy have few if any friends. Very few seek out friendships with people who have so little to give back to the relationship. But thinking like that robs us of some of the greatest friendships we could ever know. Just as real love does not keep a list of wrongs, real friendship does not keep a tally of “who paid last” but tries to always give more not for bragging rights but because it just feels good to “treat” your friends and not expect to be paid back. Paying it forward is how we show the Universe we know what friendship is all about. And rest assured the Universe will pay you back many times over what you invest in others expecting no return from them.

One of my favorite lines on friendship comes from the New Testament where Jesus says, “No greater love hath any man than to lay down his life for his friends.” Seldom does friendship exact such a tole. On a lighter note a movie I have watched many time, Almost Heaven, with Reece Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, has a scene where Mark’s character asks his buddy to help him steal the body of Reece’s character from the hospital. She is in a coma and the doctor has convinced her sister to shut off the equipment keeping her alive. Anyway as the guys are running down the hall with the body on a gurney with a portable respirator Mark’s character says to his friend why have you agreed to help me do this no questions asked. His buddy replies, “Because one of these days I might need your help moving a body and I don’t want any crap out of you.” Now that’s friend.

I hope each of you has many true friends and I am grateful I get to be one of them. Always keep your eyes and heart open for the opportunity to befriend a stranger. Friends are after all are but strangers we go to know.

Your friend and fellow traveler, stranger perhaps than most,
David White