Thank You for Being a Friend

Friendship, as defined by prophets, self-help gurus, and Merriam-Webster is, “the state of being attached to another by affection or esteem.” We throw that word around when we talk about people within our social circles, whether they be casual acquaintances, business associates, or someone we interact with on social media. Perhaps we have friends that we associate with when doing a certain activity or visiting a specific place who make an appearance in a story we tell to people we have just met. But have you ever stopped to consider what makes a true and genuine friendship: the deep, connecting type of attachment that makes the definition come alive with the history that it evokes?

In the fall of 1979, at the ripe age of four years old, I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the schoolhouse, where, unbeknownst to me, I met the guys who would become the greatest group of true friends. I was too young to know that these fellows, with their families, would have such an effect and lasting impression on my life. This year, we celebrate our 45^th year of interactions with each other, our influence on each other, and our deep respect for all we’ve seen and done together. My relationship with these guys underscores how important it is to keep true and old friendships alive for the sake of mental health and wellness, for without them, none of us will make it out thriving and happy.

With today’s emphasis on social media, endless text messaging, and the near impossibility of being unavailable, I think we’ve forgotten that we can and need to connect with those people that have had such vivid influence in our lives and tell them the importance and impact that they have had in our lives. We need to cut the dead weight that blurs our focus from the important relationships we want to nurture. Technology allows us to make those connections we thought were long gone, but we need to learn to let go of people who have a negative or temporary spot in our lives. Remember, those who truly know us, the ones who know the back story and don’t need context don’t judge the now and consider the whole instead of the current parts and eagerly and enthusiastically cheer for tomorrow.

My group, aka “The Tribe,” has been there without fail for the better part of four decades. We have celebrated milestones such as graduations, promotions, marriage, and the birth of children. We have mourned the loss of parents, survived the worry that comes with military deployments, and the awkwardness of the end of a marriage. We have rallied and circled the wagons for more life events than I can number. We laugh hard at and with one another, and we cry with each other without shame or embarrassment. We are not afraid to tell each other that we love them. All while being separated by miles and the time constraints of being family men and working professionals. Small groups of us get together at random times throughout the year, but we take an annual trip to the lake each summer for a full-on battery charging weekend. For all of us, it contributes to our overall wellbeing and empowers us come back to the real world with a fresh sense of focus and renewed energy for those things we love and cherish the most.

True friendships pick up right where you left off the last time you were together. Fortunately, with today’s technology, we can feed the relationships we want to foster with the click of a button. We can also reach out and rekindle friendships that may have slipped away simply due to the rat race that is life. We can gift a smile to someone’s day, offer words of encouragement, or simply share a laugh without seeing the person’s face. However, physical interaction with friends releases chemicals in the brain that are addictive and gives something to the soul that is hard to quantify or accurately describe. It is truly priceless.

I hope that 2024 will be the year that you reach out to a long-lost friend or that you make the time to truly connect with your tribe. I know that in doing so, you will enrich yourself beyond measure. Everyone you know is struggling with something in their life and by reaching out, you might just be the one thing that person needs right now: knowing that a friend is thinking about them and that they are loved.