Day 258: Unconditional Love Special Edition: Friends

They tell us to cherish those high school moments because they will never happen again. You’ll grow up and move away. The dear friends you grew up with will find new friends in some distant part of the world. Everyone’s interests change. People turn into couples and buys houses and have kids and stay home on Saturday nights. New friends come. New friends go. There is no real predicting who we will find or be close to twenty years later. But the ones that stick around for you are the ones worth sticking around for.

Friendship, like any relationship, takes some work if you want it to last. And I don’t mean having to have a heart-to-heart talk every couple months to discuss your communication skills. I’m talking about fun work. The work that doesn’t come naturally after high school: and that is time. There are a lot of things that we do every day, every week, and year. We have our routines, but for the people that matter you have to create time to talk to them and time to spend with them. Time is the most important currency of our lives, and using it to share moments with people is what creates those long-lasting friendships.

Throughout life, there may be some ups and downs. Friends piss us off from time to time, but for those that matter we find ways to forgive them. It’s almost second nature after a while. And after enough time a friend will simply accept all your quirks. There will be no need for forgiveness because there will be nothing to forgive. That is unconditional love for a person.

As more years stack on and people move away, it becomes harder to create that time. One of the blessings of this quarantine is that some of us found ways to communicate without being in the same room together. We realized that a video chat can be just as fun as hanging out at a bar. Because it isn’t about the setting, it’s about the people.

I can't express in words how blessed am I to still have as many close friends as I do. I thank you all and am forever grateful every day that you stick around for me.