The Zen of Good Friends

For my entire life I have run in many circles of friends. I have to say I consider myself one of the most fortunate people in the world, because over my lifetime I have had several groups of friends, from many different quarters, on whom I could truly depend. This fact was brought home last year after my stroke. But that is not why I write this today.

Today’s entry is actually about one of my circle of friends, and how they have rallied around a member of the community who is going through a tough time. This particular group is my high school classmates. One of our classmates, a little over a year ago, was diagnosed with colon cancer. Immediately many of our classmates began making plans to be with him, whether it was to have a party to celebrate steps in treatment, or meals for he and his wife, or just phone calls and constant contact.

So, things went very well for this friend through treatment. In fact about 3wks ago he was told by his doctor that he could consider himself “Cancer Free!” It was a moment of great celebration by all of us. However, what was supposed to be a routine surgery to remove his colostomy bag, ended up putting him in the ICU for a week, and rehospitalized for probably 3-4 wks. I learned about this and immediately made plans to go visit. (A thing I was very uncomfortable doing until after my stroke when I learned how comforting those visits were.) When I got to the hospital to visit I was fascinated by his stories of how many classmates had taken the time to come up and actually visit, and how many others had called, or texted, or e-mailed. And the communication between classmates has been fascinating, because with Facebook and other social sites many others are keeping up, but not having direct contact.

Now this may not sound that interesting to you, but what I find interesting about this is that most of these people, up until about 2yrs ago, had not spoken to each other but every 10 years or so. See we graduated in ’88 and with some exceptions of friends who stayed in contact with one or two people, we all went our separate ways. I, for one, unless I just happened to run into someone, had not consciously communicated with anyone from high school in 9 years when I heard of preparation for our 10th class reunion. Then again I had not consciously communicated with anyone for another 7years. Then came a beautiful thing… one of the class members put together a web forum for us to communicate for reunion planning. Well that became open communication for everything going on in each other’s lives. And, suddenly we were all just tight as back in high school. No, tighter, as most of us have grown up a bit and have much more honest relationships than we did back in high school.

Again I found myself in a close knit community of friends. A point that was emphasized last year with my stroke, when the first person to visit me in the hospital was a classmate. In fact, recounting, off all the people that visited me in the hospital, classmates were the largest contingency, followed by church family, and bio/marriage-family.

But as I said in the opening, I have been extremely fortunate to have several circles of friends that were this close, over my life. Some of these friends I may not actually see for years and years. And others I may not even speak to for years at a time. But when we reconnect we play catch-up, and it is like no time passed at all. A trait I think I learned from my mother, who I can remember would visit friends when we traveled, and when I asked when she last spoke to the person she would say, oh, about 20 years ago.

The great thing about all this modern technology is that it actually keeps people like me connected with all those different friends, even the ones I don’t see often. Through Facebook and Twitter I can keep up with what is going on in friends lives better than ever before. In the past it was only when I heard from someone that I was able to play catch-up, now with a tweet here and there, and a posting update they let me know what’s happening in their lives.

So I guess the point of this posting is that I am a very fortunate man. And if you find you don’t have such a group of people that you consider “friends” reach out, because they are worth more than gold.


Retro