Muse: Friends

What does the word friend mean to you? If you really think about it, when you say someone is your friend, what does that actually entail? 

Someone you’ve known since grade school? Someone you met just recently for the first time who you can’t wait to have happy hour with next week? Someone you’ve been following on Twitter that you’ve only met in person a few times? Someone you have a strong connection with that even though you may only see them once in a blue moon, they always leave you with the warm fuzzies inside?

To me, these are all examples of types of friends, but not all are the kind that involve friendship. There’s a difference. As I age I realize how important understanding, cultivating, nurturing, and defining a friendship truly is. Someone once said to me ” you refer to everyone as a friend, and not a colleague”. I hadn’t really thought about it up until that point, but they were right. I like referring to people as friends. It’s nicer. Warmer. Much more intimate than ‘colleague’. We can be friends, but don’t have to be in a friendship, right? Or do we?

Have you ever met anyone that doesn’t really have any friendships? You know, the one in the bunch that is front and center at all events, tweeting with everyone, but doesn’t have any long term, close friendships to speak of? How about those folks that always travel in a pack, are rarely alone and struggle with one on one conversation? Know anyone that keeps their friendships so protected and closed so that nobody else can get in?

Defining friendship can be tricky. I had lunch with a friend today, and we chatted long and hard about this very topic. Things are changing, for all of us. People change, life changes, our work gets more demanding, our days seem to get shorter and yet our friends are still our friends, right?

My mother used to call things that needed changing or changes happening around us a “changing of the guard”. Our guard may need changing, or it may go right on and change without us even realizing at first, and that’s ok.

I’m so appreciative to have the friendships I have, and the friends. I realize that the people that have chosen to be on my guard, and that I have been so fortunate to be on their’s, are the ones I can most definitely say thanks for the friendship. And for those that are no longer on guard, thanks for being a friend.

I appreciate you.