Friendship

Everyone has a different definition of what friendship means.  It is a concept nearly as complex as love.  True friendship is something I have spent my life searching for like a prospector looking for a seam of gold.  Growing up I was fortunate to have lived in one place.  I developed a couple friends that I shared almost my entire youth with.  We were neighbors and in many ways brothers.  While connected to my familiar environment I always felt myself reaching to a world beyond.  Those were the days of letters and I eagerly wrote to pen palls I made around the world.  I had friends in Germany, England, Sweden and the Philippines.  I actually ended up marrying my friend from the Philippines but that is a long story for another time.

There was something special about learning from other people in seemingly exotic places.  I discovered different points of view and a feeling that while far away, peoples thoughts, dreams and desires in life were very much the same.  It instilled in me a desire to want to find those far away places and discover them for myself.  Being an only child I was fortunate that my parents were able to take me with them when they traveled overseas to Europe and England.  I suppose simply put, the combination of physical and personal relationships opened my mind.

When I came of age I made a decision to break with my childhood stability and discover a world beyond my boundaries.  My friends elected to stay in the world that we all knew.  There is not right or wrong, simply alternate paths through life.  Time and distance pulled us apart yet the few times I have been back to the frozen north of Alaska to visit, it seemed like time had stood still.  Our bodies were older but our hearts were the same.  I think this is a sign of true friendship.  It is a feeling that time has stood still and that despite the years the deep commonality that once bound has never left.

Perhaps it was the emotional impact of this severing of relationships that fundamentally changed who I was and who I am.  The majority of my life I have spent without friends close to me.  I had a wonderful period of life for six years living in Bolivia.  I had a respite of friendship where I was close to three guys that are still near and dear to my heart.  My brothers of middle life.  We still meet when possible but each of us battles with the restrictions our own lives put upon us.  Distance, families and other pressures are constant barriers to overcome.

I think as a way of compensating I have continued my search through life for friends that are far away.  People I write to and know but who are seldom beside me.  Perhaps in a sense it is a defense mechanism.  A way of protecting myself from the emotional loss of having a person close and then losing them as life pulls you apart.  
For some reason I have a strong desire to know what has happened to anyone that I once shared life with.  Perhaps it was a friend, maybe a lover.  While distant, I want to know where they are and what has become of their life.  I think there is something fulfilling in understanding the continuity of life.  Maybe I never really let go.  In the face of this, I must ask the question, should I?

Facebook has been a wonderful portal feeding this addiction.  It allows a voyeuristic look into the lives of those you know and a subliminal reassurance that they still breath the same air and walk the same earth.  Ironically, sometimes it lets me see more then I really want to.  There is an odd trend in the world of social networking to go far beyond the normal fragmentary details and substitute a diatribe of the mundane.  Some even conduct private relationships in the public view while others contemplate details usually kept hidden.

So what is true friendship?  I think in many ways it is a diamond that the prospector mentioned at the commencement of this oration may stumble across, mostly by luck.  It is a person that holds you deeply in their heart and soul the way you do for them.  It is a bond that supersedes time and space and is forever as current as the day it was left.  It is a mark of a person in the world that would give to you as willingly as you would give to them. It is a person that you trust the details of your life and your career and know that they will protect you as you will them.   Most of all it is a key.  It is a key to liberate you from the jail of a solitary life.  I think often we take our friendships for granted when they should be celebrated and cherished.  I am as guilty as most yet when possible, I do my best to let those most important to me how valuable you are in my life.  Those that are my dearest friends know they are and at this moment, with these words they are smiling with me filled with the same joy and love for me as I feel for them.