Retirement Talk

WHAT to do with the rest of your life?

logo

Episode 654 Friend Turn Over


This is Retirement Talk. This is Del Lowery.

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 one. 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 response who was trying to describe pornography might have also applied his definition to that of friendship. “I know it when I see it”


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 without children. Now we exchange Christmas cards and see him once a year for about an hour when we visit Alaska . He died this past year at age 92.  I think about his comment today as one of our very good friends of the last 30 odd years just moved three hundred miles away to Portland. We will miss her. 

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 just don’t think I have made any new “friends”. It just seems like a devaluation of the word “friend”.

Many years ago another former friend of mine gave me a bottle of wine. “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.

 

Friends are not easy to come by nor are they easy to hold on to. We have to take care with friends. 


This is Retirement Talk.


If you have questions, comments or suggestions contact del@retirementtalk.org

 


 


 


 



 

 

Follow Retirement Talk on Facebook: http://retirementtalk.org/ on Facebook

rss