Ralph is my friend.

I met up with a friend for a good old catchup today after six months or so and three hours later I was left a little hoarse but with lots to ponder and be grateful for. I am the kind of person that likes to divulge, share, expose everything, get it all out there and discover the solution aloud. For better or worse, I am lucky as I have some true friends that can act as a soundboard, listen to the tears and angry vents but also laugh at my silly notions and provide a verbal kick up the backside when I need it. Ralph Waldo Emerson, american philosopher and poet echoes my point here, 'A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.'

I think that friendship is such an important part of our lives that is sometimes just accepted as a prerequisite and taken for granted. It seems there are universal days to remember our family members and public holidays to show appreciation for a partner, but there is not one communal celebration used for our closest comrades who are present through the good, bad, silly or serious. Well, in an ideal world they would be present for those times anyway. Ralph gets it right again, 'It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.'

I have learnt recently that some people have very unusual ideas about what makes a good friend. The fair-weather friend, is available when it suits them and extremely busy every time it suits you. There are the more sheepish mates that prefer to sit on the fence whenever possible, avoid passing an opinion or voicing their sub-text aloud. There's the people that crave excitement and constantly create events, ideas, stories and facts about themselves that are all too dramatic and fantastical to be real, but they believe this enhances their friendship and makes it evermore desirable. There's always one person who prefers to filter between a group of friends passing on opinions and relaying unnecessary information in secret, in denial that this will bring them closer to a chosen member of the group, but in reality it alienates them from everyone. There are the childhood friendships, where you are inseparable with someone for a few years and then owing to circumstances part and never speak again. In opposition you sometimes find the people who are so similar to you that you can rely on them to understand, when you say something everyone else perceives to be completely idiotic! The ones who can sense when you are close to tears even before you do. The people who swallow their pride for you, stick their neck out for you and aren't too proud to say that they miss you.

I think I can safely say I have encountered all these types of friendships at some point in my life so far. Some experiences have been negative but all of them have been an experience shared and that has therefore taught me a great deal. Ralph supports this view also, 'What is so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling?'

Coming from somebody who was a late developer in the making friends department, I think I have managed along the way to find myself a solid group of people from the different parts of my life that make-up my true friends, diamonds in the rough that I will endeavour to remain friends with for what I hope to be a lifetime.


"Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine,--a possession for all time." Ralph Waldo Emerson