Nov. 06, 2004 - 20:02 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Few Words

I think there are people that each of us treasure in our own lives. Some are related to us by our birth into a family, some we learn to look up to as being experts on everything.

And as we grow we meet a kindred soul here and there along the way. Each of us have words to describe particular peers. Pal, buddy, etc., but when smelted down to the precious metal those people are friends of ours.

A friend accepts you for who you are - deep down. A friend will help in any way they can, to the limit of their capabilities. A friend may call one a dumb dodo because we are going a certain way, but still, they remain our friend.

Not because you are handsome if a man or if a woman beautiful. We don't really look at the exterior person all that much. If so, I would have no friends for sure. And there are people whose souls are so brightly lit with love and friendship that clothing and facial characteristics are not really noticed.

As peers I don't think we boys really noticed or cared who their parents were, or their economic condition. We just knew that we had backup, so to speak. Backup in too many ways to mention.

I remember a lesson well learned by me when a teacher was telling us the most convenient way to remember how to spell friend. A friend is a fri-end, a friend to the end. I wonder if she realized that some of us would take that to our heart above and beyond simple spelling ?

A friend rejoices in the good things that happen to one, and will silently sit by one's side through the grim times when everything is going wrong and all seems hopeless.

I go through each day with the knowledge that there are people whom I have never laid eyes on who are my staunch friends, as I to them.

In my own personal life, a friend is one who I am comfortable to be with, and there is a mutual respect for each other, whose conversation I enjoy, and who has the same sense of humor and accceptance of life and the world. Most of the time our goals and ethics are the same. Yet there is leeway for differences of opinion. Then we agree to disagree and go on with our friendship.

Funny, for the most part "sex" doesn't really enter into the picture. We do, I think, acknowledge that there is such activity but it does not necessarily imply that our interchanges are steamy and assignations are made. Love, is however, in the picture immensely. I do love my friends, love them as sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles or shirttail kin because I feel friendship is a family type activity and my friends are part my family.

Of course being a friend means sharing grief between us, as well as the fireworks of success. Friends worry about each other and each other's family. We worry about troubles a friend is having at work, worry about a friends recovery from illness of any kind.

There glows a warm fire on the hearth of my heart and friends are always welcome there. Of course friends are in my prayers always.

Somebody once asked me to define friendship in several words. I thought, trying to do it simple, and then told them, "Not in just a Few Words . . . . . . . . .

Blog