Friendships

    When we are small children it seems fairly easy to make friendships.  We usually know the kids we grow up with from the “neighborhood” and normally these are the ones we go to school with on a daily basis.  As the years pass we begin to gravitate toward those who develop similar interests that we have and before we know it these individuals become the cornerstones of what develops as our “circle of friends.”

     However, when we graduate from High School and venture off into our chosen areas of adulthood, these “friends” sometimes only become memories from our past.  We no longer have the connections that we had as children.  We don’t share the same interests that brought us together while we were growing up.  Now our interests are on new things, new people, and our imagined adventures that await us in our adult lives.  Sometimes these things become reality and at other times they do not!

     There may be times in our future when we find ourselves wanting (or at least trying) to “journey home”, but it seems that things are never the same when we do so.  That house we grew up in is never as large as it was when we were younger.  Those places we loved to go to even if it were to only sit and watch “the world pass us by” now having very little meaning for us.  Or perhaps they no longer exist.  I remember some fond memories from my junior high school days.  Now that building has been torn down and the land is commercial buildings with a huge parking lot.

     To some degree it is the same with the friends we made while growing up.  We have moved on with our lives and so have they.  Things that we had in common in the past no longer interest us or them!  We have our families and they have theirs.  We have new adventures and friends and so do they.  And we do have those occasions when we can once again meet and share “old memories” often neither of us remember things exactly the same way.  Are we right or is their rendition the correct one?  It may be hard to say.  Perhaps neither of us remembers the situation as it truly happened.  Maybe we both have some of the details a bit confused!

     At times it would seem so wonderful if we could turn back the clock and return to those simpler days.  Maybe we could regain the friendships we had in the past or make greater efforts to continue them into the future?  Yet, it may be better for all concerned for us to hang on to the memories that we have of these by-gone friendships from the past the way we remember them instead of finding out that what we recall in our minds is far from the reality we had lived!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"Right or wrong.

Good or bad.

A friend is the one you can be with

and be YOU!"