This is part 2 to a post I wrote in 2009
———
This quote comes to mind (Harvey Milk to Cleve Jones – from the film, Milk):
“…you won’t know until the end of your life who your greatest friends were or your greatest love was.”
At the ripe old age of 24, I have many more years to fall in love again and again, to share my life with people that I care about today but may not tomorrow and I have a lot of opportunities to screw this up and start over from scratch. Still, despite not even reaching a quarter life crisis, this quote truly speaks to me. It gives me hope and I feel grateful.
This feeling of friendship will strengthen as I grow older and a side note that I should add is the word choice in “growing older” instead of using “get older”. The assumption that I get older or “become” older means that it just happens. The calendar flips and I “become” older and I feel that too many of us do this. Instead, I grow older. Each day, I grow a bit more and so do my friends and their friends and our families. We grow older and forge our path to whatever is next. Growing is the key to a healthy and happy life.
Friendship; according to Urban Dictionary is:
Permission to treat people like shit without the unfortunate backlash of physical pain that possibly comes with treating complete strangers like shit.
Maybe so but what I’ve realized is friendship is that ability to allow for 6 months to a year go by and still manage to take part in a 3 hour conversation as if zero time has passed. I’ve never experienced this with anyone until just recently. It’s that common bond you can exclaim out loud that you love that person expecting absolutely nothing in return but for them to keep listening to what’s new in your life and it’s that ability to say, “talk to you soon” with no date in mind. There’s no schedule to keep or timer that runs out. It may be another year and you’ll still answer as if you just spoke hours ago. Friendship is the ability to drop everything, hop on a plane and hold someone’s hand who is in the hospital, to drive for hours and sit beside their bed in sickness and send over $50 when they need it.
More than any action that can be performed, friendship is a unbreakable bond that is worth more than a life. It’s a bond of true love.
One can only hope that we have the luck, ability, chance to make this person our spouse. Marrying your best friend, it sounds like a dream come true. There are so many people who miss out on this. As we grow older, our bodies will fail, our minds will go and our ability to have experiences with our friends will diminish but two friends will always have the ability to sit quietly side by side in front of the fire not speaking a word and feel the love of the other. Marriage or not, friendship is for life.
My only hope is that I have the chance for just one friendship and maybe two if I’m lucky. I hope I have the chance to marry my best friend and spend my life with them. What a life.
Here’s to our friendships and to those people who step into our lives from time to time and enrich each moment. Here’s to our current and past lovers and here’s to our families who support us no matter what.
Here’s to friendship.
———
…and as I wrote the last sentence, this song came on and I’d like to share these lyrics via @BT (Brian Transeau)
First, we are explicably where we are
Chaste and burned… we’re comfortably loveless
In a trillion years, the stars will no longer shine
We’ll remain.
Get it right or come back again
My love…Make it clear, integrate this love and fear
Still hopelessly hopeful
Wounded child seeking wonderful
As closed as I am,
Born a craftsman of shifting sands
What lies I learned
Lessened my ability to be presentMy love will never change
Though we’ve ruined everything
The stars still conspire for us
Until our final breathsWe need more love in the world
We need more hope in the world
Build more joy in the world
We crave more love…The only constant is change
Goodnight my friends. As always, thank you for reading.