Of friendships, Anaïs Nin says: “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
What a glorious Sunday for me with friends from London and their circle of friends whom I’ve come to know through the years. Then on Saturday I will meet with new friends through an invitation from the Consul General of Lebanon to celebrate the 65th Anniversary of the National Day of Lebanon at the Embassy in New York.
But as we sipped champagne on Sunday celebrating a birthday and a bride, I looked around the room at faces of those whom I haven’t seen in several years and we all picked up where we left off.
And I came to understand the value of my own friends – those who know me better than I know myself. In talking with one of the women we realized that we didn’t get out more often because we said, almost simultaneously, “social recluses.” We both love people and parties, but rather stay at home and have people come to us.
Nonetheless we all traveled from various places to join the Londoners in Boston. And I reveled more than ever in the friendships criss crossing from across the miles. I realized how wonderfully protective friendships are. Friends help you to stay balanced, will help you laugh at yourself, and understand the forgiveness factor.
Too often when a friendship, relationship, or marriage becomes rocky – for whatever the reasons – people ignore the problem, take their differences to the public arena, find solace in an affair, or simply leave. How sad.
As Wilma Askinas, author of “A Splice of Life” once said, “A friend is someone who sees through you and still enjoys the view.”
If you don’t have immediate access to a person whom you can really call “friend,” then make cultivating a friendship your priority. When times are tough, when spouses hit rocky places, a friend is a priceless jewel.
Maureen Dowd wrote a column for The New York Times in July talking about an ideal husband. She quoted “Father Pat Connor, a 79-year-old Catholic priest born in Australia and based in Bordentown, N.J., [who] has spent his celibate life – including nine years as a missionary in India – mulling connubial bliss.
“Never marry a man who has no friends,” he starts. “This usually means that he will be incapable of the intimacy that marriage demands…”
Marcel Proust has said, “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Copyright 2008 Rita Watson