The Care and Feeding of Friendships

Friends.

Who are they? Why do I want them? What is my role in maintaining and keeping them?

I’ve been fortunate to have friends, individuals who freely added stability, energy and honesty to my life. And I wonder if I have reciprocated with the same intensity and care.

Doubtful. But I find myself thinking often of those relationships that sustained me and where they are today. Why have I lost touch with those once vital friends, why are we disconnected?

The answer is simple. I haven’t worked on them. I haven’t invested time, energy, and interest in keeping them alive.

Friendships are much like plants. They need looking after: water, care, weeding, pruning, and attention. When left abandoned friendships dry up, blow away, disappear as they seek a more hospitable home. They want and need to be welcomed at my life’s table, not shuffled off to a corner collecting dust, their voices no longer heard.

Perhaps it is laziness, busyness, or life changes causing me to lose focus on those friendships. But tucked away in the recesses of my memory I find myself wondering what has become of those friends who were vital to my life.

Friendships take work. They require time and commitment; setting aside my impatience, my self-absorption, and my limited awareness of my need for friends.

I find myself wondering about their needs today, if they are surrounded by family members who love them. Are they happy? Lonely? Sad? Thriving?

And how much do I want to invest in reconnecting? It is a sobering quandary if all I want is a short and smooth version of their bumpy past. Or am I willing to listen, decipher the unspoken thoughts, hear the pauses that spell heartbreak, and offer a verbal pat on the back of a friend I once had?

What is that friend’s last name now, and has she moved? I don’t have a mobile phone number nor an email address. Maybe Facebook?

Whoever you are, wherever you are, please know I do remember we were once friends, and perhaps we still are, if only in our memories.