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Today's
Meditation:
It's so easy
to take friendships for granted, isn't it? This is
especially true of those friends who are always there for
us, who do all they can for us without us ever asking-- we
tend to take them for granted far more than we do our
other friends. But when we take our friends for
granted and simply assume that they're going to be there
for us all the time, we do the people and the friendship a
huge disservice, and we run the risk of losing something
that should be very special to us.
How
do we nourish friendships, then? How do we make sure
that we don't allow them to die? It actually doesn't
take tons of work to make sure that they flourish-- a nice
note now and again, a phone call just to say hi, checking
in every now and then to see how our friends are doing,
getting together for a simple cup of coffee from time to
time-- little things that remind our friends that they mean
something to us and that we're thinking about them can
work wonders when we want to maintain our friendships
actively instead of letting them perish.
Sometimes,
of course, friendships aren't meant to be. If I keep
trying to maintain a friendship and the other person
doesn't seem at all interested in doing so also, then I
really need to take the hint and let it go, don't I?
I can spend an awful lot of time and effort to maintain
something that really isn't what I thought it was.
But that's okay, too-- sometimes what we think are
friendships are simply acquaintanceships, and they don't
require nearly as much effort as a true friendship
does. We need to be able to tell the difference
between the two.
I
would do anything for my friends. In a culture of
hyper-independence, though, these days true friends aren't
as willing to ask as much of their friends, so it usually
doesn't happen that I give too much. But I'm willing
to be there for them, which as Mary says below is an
extremely important aspect of a strong friendship.
We need to be willing to be there for them if we're to
have the friendship flourish and thrive. It's up to
our friends, too, to help to maintain the relationship,
but we can't deny that much of the responsibility is ours.
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