Retirement Talk
WHAT to do with the rest of your life? |
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Episode 174 Friend
Turn Over
What's a
friend worth? Of
course, a price cannot be set on what a friend is worth. Money just
doesn’t
compute – or convert. Republicans and democrats could probably
agree on that. I
think it was Aristotle who defined a friend as one soul in two bodies.
If it
wasn’t him it was someone like him; some great thinker. The
Supreme Court
justice who was trying to describe pornography might have also applied
his
definition to that of friendship. “I know it when I see it”
This is
Retirement Talk.
One
thing about friends in
today’s frenetic world, they have a way of moving on. Either they
do or we do.
An old friend of mine in
Alaska
was
talking
many years ago about the idea of moving “outside” or,
“the lower 48” as the
contiguous
USA
is called. I had suggested that it might be good for him to move just
for the
change. He quickly straightened me out with the statement that he
didn’t have
to move to have change. “All my friends have moved: either that
or they’ve
died.” he said. “You can stay right in one place but it
keeps changing all the
time”.
He was a
good friend, but
emphasis on the “was”. We moved. He used to come to dinner,
celebrate holidays
and frolic with out children. Now we exchange Christmas cards and see
him once
a year for about an hour when we visit
Alaska
.
There are others.
We all
have our stories.
Sometimes a friend from the past pops into our lives with a phone call,
a
Christmas card, or a facebook request. These are blissful moments;
emphasis on
“moments”. They just don’t last. There's no depth.
We've lost contact. I have
seen some old friends in the past few years and it was wonderful but
somehow it
doesn’t make up for the long dinners, the walks together in the
woods, the
close contact that emerges only in real time and real space.
“Friendship
requires duration
rather than intensity” some philosopher said. They went on,
“He who has many
friends has no friends”. I know that facebook calls our contacts
‘friends’ but
of course they are really just acquaintances. Or, I suppose they could
be
called friends in the loosest sense of the word. We were once
“friends” or
people we knew in one way or another. Don’t get me wrong. I like
facebook. I
like reconnecting with people from the past. I’m not sure I have
made any new
“friends”. It just seems like a devaluation of the word
“friend”.
Another
former friend of mine
gave me a bottle of wine many years ago. “It is really good
wine,” he said. And
then added, “If you open it when you have a good friend over it
will be all the
better”. How true.
We have to take
care with
friends. They are not easy to come by nor are they easy to hold on to.
This is Retirement
Talk.
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A friend's website: Terra Firma Designs: Fine Furniture, Stained Glass and woodworking workshops.
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