What is a Friend?

Hello Friend #419… You’re My FAVE!

Five Hundred Friends?

I hear of some folks these days having hundreds of well wishers and I wonder;

• where do they find time for all these buddies?
• how much time must one invest with someone to be a friend?
• don’t they have anything else to do?

Too Many Pals = None

What concerns me about such seemingly harmless behavior is that few people have enough true friends these days and yet they seem to be going cheaper by the dozen.

Folks find themselves in positions where they have no one they can trust or share secrets with and they wind up having to pay “professionals” to act out this role for them. Of course, they’re not called professional friends, they’re called psychiatrists or counsellors but really, they’re highly paid friends.

I think the reason that most of us have only the necessary support from those chosen few who are concerned about our existence is because of the limited understanding of what friendship is all about to begin with.

Buddy, You’re Different

Real friends are the people who know you and like you anyway.

Hey! You Have Freckles! Yuck! We’re Done!

They don’t expect you to be perfect and they recognize your limitations. True friends are the people whom we can let down our hair around and as I get older my hair is in just as short supply as loyal and non judgemental friends.

The cool thing is that a friendship can be started at any time simply by cutting someone enough slack to allow their character to shine through. And unlike the person I described above, we don’t need a million friends, even just a couple of good compadres will do.

Hail, I’d settle for even one.

Thank you, friend.

Barry out.