Love―for the duration

FRIENDS

“Friends are a strange, volatile, contradictory, yet sticky phenomenon. They are made, crafted, shaped, molded, created by focused effort and intent. And yet, true friendship, once recognized, in its essence is effortless.
Best friends are formed by time.
Everyone is someone's friend, even when they think they are all alone.
However, sometimes it takes more effort to make it work after all.
Stick around long enough to become someone's best friend.” 
―Vera Nazarian

Old friendships are like a fine wine, that keeps getting better with time...

I have been blessed with many good friends in my life.  Just like spring flowers vibrantly bloom and fall leaves turn bright colors―so too, certain friends have been more prominent during different seasons of my life. 

I love making new friends. It’s been one of my favorite things about what I’ve been doing the past year.  And how I do love my old friends as well!  These are the friends I can go weeks, months, or even years without much contact―then pick right back up with―as if no time ever passed. Both new and old, friends are a blessing. 

A good (old) friend once quoted to me a great line from the movie Sweet Home Alabama... “you can have roots and wings” ―as relative to my travels. Well, if that’s true―old friends are, at least in part, the roots of life. Our old friends know us like no one else.  They know the things we hid from our parents growing up. They know the depth of broken hearts we’ve had. The silly of our youth. The struggles of our growing up. The wishes that have come to fruition. The dreams that we have been forced to let go of. They know the blood and sweat of the pursuits of our adulthood. 

"You can have roots and wings..." Sweet Home Alabama

Old friends are very much the “mathematical constants” of life’s equation. By definition that would be: a special number, usually a real number, that is “significantly interesting in some way.” Old friends ground and define our equations.  And, quite often, when the equation of life is not working out as we’d planned, we scratch everything but those constants for a clean slate “do-over.” But the real, the special, the significantly interesting in some way...that all stays put―as we try to work the numbers again and succeed.  

I was reminded on one of my most special and dearest friend’s birthday recently of thoughts we once shared on this topic from the movie “City Slickers.” All of the characters were at some major crossroad in their life before heading out west to wrangle cattle for a weeks vacation. What the movie highlighted so well, was how old friends are a mirror of truth we can hold up (like a compass) when deciding how to navigate those crossroads. Who are we?  Where do we want our life to go? Not that our friends decided this for us, but that they are the best guides to show us our history and what has defined us thus far. 

I wouldn’t have made it past several crossroads of life if not for certain old friends. And I love the promise I share with one of these old friends (which most recently moved from the unspoken promise that was always there, to a spoken one when we coined the promise into a simple phrase): “for the duration.”

A beautiful "cross road" of life...

It was through this promise that I learned what the love of old friends is really about. Friends that go through broken hearts and share in the amazement that they didn’t kill us. Friends that make each other keep laying down tracks for dreams that seem far away―in hopes the train will one day come.  Friends that provide the emotional fuel to allow us to climb over the mountain to the other side. Friends that (symbolically) hit each other over the head with the cast iron skillet for wake up calls when needed. Old friends. Loyal friends. Friends―for the duration.