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Showing posts with label compassion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label compassion. Show all posts

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Funny how this friendship thing works, isn't it?

Over the course of many years I have had lots of friends.  I guess one would call them friends.  I had one friend in grade school, but she moved on to other friends when we began high school.  I did not leave high school with any real friends.   After marriage I moved around a lot so that was not conducive to any friendships.  When I moved back to Hutchinson and went to work I did begin to form relationships with other women who were in the same postition of raising a family on my own.  Unfortuneately I also met men who were marriage minded and so it goes.  To cut to the chase, when I moved to Colorado I left the few friends I had and did not look back.
 
So now it is 35 years later and here I am.  I still have 2 of the Kansas friends, although I do not talk to them much.  Several others have passed away as the human race is known to do.   I have culivated a whole  new crop out here in Colorado and for the most part I am pretty happy with my friend situation.  My mother once told me that true friends are hard to come by and that if you reach the end of your life and you can count your true friends on one hand you are blessed.

Here is my take on a friend...a friend is someone that I have something in common with.  A great friend knows what I am saying and takes me at face value.  A true friend does not judge me because I stumble and will help me up when I fall.   My friend likes to spend time with me, but does not smother me.

Recently I have had occasion to wonder about a "true friend".  True is defined as faithful, loyal.  Friend is defined as a person attached to another by affection or regard.  I have always just tried to be there for my friends, to listen, lend a helping hand and when the rough spots are over, forget that they were there.
So, following that premise, I think my friends should do the same for me.   Not so with one.  I looked at something he had done and thought , "What a petty, mean little man he is!"  I told him that, too.  His reply to me was to point out all the things he had done for us over the years out of the "kindness of his heart."  What all he had "given " us.

Fifteen years is a long time to be friends with someone and then have them remember every thing they did and recount it.  Did my loyalty mean nothing?  Sure looks that way to me.

I was at a loss to counter what I had did for him because what I had done, I had done and forgotten about.    He is a business man and I had recommended him to several lucrative clients.  And prepared lots of special diet food for him and the wife, but I forgot about it as soon as it was delivered.  Labors of love are not remembered after they are done.

So water goes under the bridge.  Chalk it up to experience and move on.  So, I called my friend in Missouri and made plans to meet her in August.  That is how it goes.  She asks nothing of me and I expect the same of her.  Good talking to her.  Kind of renews my faith in friends.  We have a long history and we shall catch up in August and forget about the inconsequential little people who want stroked and told they are wonderful  when they are hurting people for no good reason except selfishness.

One thing I have learned on my journey is that  to have a friend, you must first be a friend and that is how it goes!



Another year down the tubes!

Counting today, there are only 5 days left in this year.    Momma nailed it when she said "When you are over the hill you pick up speed...