Blog 3746 – 02.12.2026
The Greatest Gift We Have To Give
More than anything else beginning and maintaining relationships requires the investment of time. Time listening to their story and sharing our own, getting to know them, and staying caught up with what is going on in their life, and catching them up on ours is the secret that Dale Carnegie shared in his best selling book, How To Win Friends and Influence People.
I heard someone experienced in negotiating business deals with South American countries say once that folks there would not even consider talking about business till after a two or three hour meal with lots of getting to know one another conversation. They only wanted to do business with their friends and it takes time and sharing our thoughts to determine if we indeed want to be friends with someone or they with us.
Sadly, in today’s busy world many of us have come to believe that we can begin and maintain real friendships and relationships, with an occasional tweet or text and have come to avoid voice calls and face to face conversations because they take too much time. We find ourselves with fewer and fewer true friends with all our relationships becoming transactional. We even label the people in our lives, my school friends, my church friends, my business friends or those people who share a hobby or a single interest with us by that name i.e “my golfing buddies.” I dare say most of us have spent so little time with even or nearest neighbors that we know little or nothing about them or they us.
We can spend a whole weekend binge watching several seasons of an assemble drama or comedy series to the point where we know the characters so well that they feel like family or dear friends. To use a line attributed to the Apostle Paul, “Beloved, these things ought not to be so.” How long has it been since you spent even thirty minutes giving someone else your undivided attention really catching up on one another’s lives?
This time I’ll quote a favorite chili commercial: “Neighbor how long’s it been since you had a big, thick,steaming bowl of Wolf Brand Chili? Well, that’s too long!”
Drop by and see an old friend today? Set aside at least an hour in case they feel like talking. Make use of those opportunities waiting for appointments or traveling with others by train, plane, or bus to introduce yourself to the stranger beside you and make a new friend. Be prepared to invest some time. I assure you it will be the best investment you can ever make, one that will pay dividends for the rest of your life.
The older we get the more friends we lose to divorce, death, disaster, or just neglect. We can do little, if anything about the first three, but the last one is totally within our power to correct. It just takes a little effort and time.
Start slowly if you like. Instead of trying to find a new abbreviation or acronym to make your phone texts even shorter, spell it out, expand to a few sentences, maybe even a couple of paragraphs. Then try an old school voice call. Leave a voice message. Ask questions, share personal details. As a little red-headed boy named Michael said when he over heard his Grandma who was raising him say that she had trouble making friends said, “Mommy, making friends is easy, all you have to do is to act friendly.”
Making friends and keeping them is easy, just act friendly like you have no where else to be and nothing more important to do. The greatest gift we have to give to our friends and family is our time and attention.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
theencouragingword 