Friendships

My staycation has ended up being a raincation.  This June was the wetest June in Washington history by three inches, and the downpours didn't even hiccup moving into July.  We are not talking drizzle here, but serious rain.  Last Sunday delivered two inches in one day.  So much for lingering over a light read by the pool, hiking, and biking in the park.

With that said, I've luxuriated over books that I've wanted to get into and have finally been able, as well as doing spot reading in other books.  At the first of each month, I used to faithfully visit LifeCycles by Christine Delorey, a wonderful introduction to numerology and the spiritual lessons that await us each month.  The pace of my life has been such that when I picked up LifeCycles at the beginning of this month, I realized I hadn't opened it since last fall.

Much of my growth in the month of July is about friendships, and as I read Delorey's words, I found them quite moving.  "Friends will be friends no matter what," she said, "separated by thousands of miles and lifetimes of years.  The bonds of real friendship cannot be broken." (p. 195)

She continued, "Take a hard look at those you call friends and ask, is that how you feel about them."

The words and the meditation that followed set me into a reverie about friendships, several of which are "...separated by thousands of miles."  I am sure that I am not the only one who has had someone walk into my life, and I knew within minutes that we would be fast friends for the rest of our lives. My college roommate Donna immediately comes to mind.  It is funny to think that we  actually only lived together about four months, but she is among my dearest friends in the world.  Now separated by 500 miles, each time we are together, we always pick up as if we'd been together yesterday, even when it has often been years.

There have often been parallels in our lives during the times when we haven't been communicating regularly, and we've sometimes laughed as we've shared our similar tales.  At times it feels like God put us here as one and then split us apart, yet somehow we've remained magically connected.

Another is my friend Amy who is 2400 miles across the country.  I met her on an elevator at a conference in Mexico almost 20 years ago, when she recognized my name on my name badge.  She had just read Leading from the Heart, which had hardly hit the market.  Before the conference ended, the bonds of friendship were sealed.  A few months later when she came to visit a cousin near Washington, we rendezvoused at her home for almost 24 hours of non-stop talking.

Although we've had some lapses, we have talked every week or every other week for much of the 20 years in between.  I feel like I know her better than a sister, even though we have only met face to face once or twice more since.  (Through the modern miracle of Skype, we now see each other on our every-other-week calls.)

I recall meeting a professional colleague for a networking coffee when I first came to Washington. We met at 1 p.m., and, when we got up to leave, I thought there was something wrong with my watch, which showed almost 5 p.m.  We were both shocked. Time had truly stood still.

There really are a small handful of people, some now gone from the world, who are/were instant and continuous friends.  If there is any justice, we will continue together in other lifetimes.  However, in my reverie this week I recalled Delorey's other admonition, "Take a hard look at those you call friends and ask, is that how you feel about them."

Leading from the Heart came out during my first full year living in North Carolina.  I recall thinking how well I'd done at making friends...until the bottom fell out of my consulting/coaching/speaking business in the dot.com bust.  Then I discovered most were fair-weather friends.  The people that I still count as NC friends either didn't know I had written books, I met after things had unwound, or I met on the dance floor.

A number of times during those years, I recalled a client I'd had in Oregon who shared that he had been a millionaire and then lost it all.  When he had to file for bankruptcy, most of his friends and his much younger wife deserted him.

How do we know?  While I think Delorey is correct that every now and then we need to take a hard look at people we claim as friends.  Yet, I would not want to be one who guards herself from potential friends for fear of being deserted when the waters of life are rough. In that way, I might not have let Donna or Amy in, and what a loss that would have been; I hope for all of us.

Friendships are a bit like investments.  We never really know when we will strike gold, but if we don't take the risk, we will always lose. I will continue to risk having the grace of special friends showered on me.