More on friendship

I wrote about friends and friendships earlier but somehow, it is never enough…

When I was a teenager my older brother told me that I should cherish all the good friendships as with the age, one only looses friends and almost never gains new ones. At first, I did not believe him as there were so many new and beautiful and smart people around me and I felt there were new friendships waiting to be grabbed and developed on every corner.

Little did I know that the real friendships don’t come to one’s door too often. The older we get, the more difficult it is to distill the reasons why people get attracted to us. In the past, in my naivety, I let many people close to me and did not see (or did not want to see) why they wanted to declare a friendship to me at all.

Throughout the years that I lived abroad, I lost contact with many good friends and found new friends instead. Except that there was hardly any comparison between the Old ones and the New ones. The New ones co-created my new social life, they were there to talk to and to laugh with and to drink beer with but somehow, with just a few exceptions, these new friendships remained rather shallow. Their roots were simply not deep enough to weather the storm of my life style. Just like my brother predicted.

On the Old friendship scene, luckily the situation was completely different: even though I haven’t seen some of my youth friends for many years, whenever the opportunity was there, we somehow always managed to get together and step halfway into a conversation as if we stopped talking an hour ago – rather than many years ago.

Last time in Prague, I finally proved my brother wrong. Yes, I have met a couple of old friends and yes, the encounters were great and felt like coming home. But I have also met new friends, my running friends that is. And guess what? The time we spent together was at least equally as good. I felt so welcome in their presence, in their homes – as if warm chocolate milk and blanket were offered to me (well, they were, actually!). I spent a lot of time with interesting people conducting interesting conversations. With people who took their time and effort to make me feel good, uncovered the hidden landscapes of their minds in order to help me to uncover my own weaknesses, with people who charged me with lots of energy, who showed me their affection and made me feel good about the way I am.

Maybe it is the running, a universal sport that outgrew in a passion (and even a life style, for some of us) that breaks all the barriers between us? If that is the case, I couldn’t have picked a better hobby.

Thank you. And the Shoe Fairy.

Single Post Navigation

← Older Entry

Newer Entry →