Amitié, Amistad, Freundschaft, Venskab, Cairdeas

 Chances are you know what one of those words mean.

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.” -Mohammed Ali

"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity." -Unknown

I guess I like to think I surround myself with people who view friendship in the same manner as I do.  When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me, "One day, you'll end up like me, with a handful of close friends, and it's going to be the quality that matters, not the quantity."
(She's a smart lady.)
I always thought to myself, "But, Ma, ALL my large quantity of friends are quality anyways!"

Over the years, I learned that wasn't the case. I wasn't always a quality friend when I was young, but as I hit college, I learned what being a quality friend meant. And, over the years, I learned that not everyone understood what being a friend meant. As with everything I suppose, everyone has a different view on what being a friend means. I've had a constant in my life for about eight years now that I can say truly gets me and I truly get her and I'm thankful for that.

Forging deep connections requires a certain amount of emotional investment, authenticity and risk. Maintaining them demands energy and may occasionally push our boundaries. Most real friendships eventually take some work, and they almost never come with guarantees. This is something I've had to learn. When I really give of myself to a friendship...I give a guarantee, but what I'm learning is that it isn't always reciprocated. That hurts. When you think about it, it feels like other people are being chosen over you. It makes you think about your guarantee...and when it's time to revoke it...because at what point do you continue to reach out, to not have your friendship reciprocated?

On the other side of that coin, I've been SO very lucky in the past few months to take a friendship that I've had that was created when I started walking/running and really grow and water it. We've connected with things in our life, even rooting to our families, that my heart feels so connected to her and to say I'm thankful isn't enough. I feel like I can share anything with her--doubts and fears, both personally and professionally, and she has been my shelter from the storm. And I hope I've been the same for her. She is extraordinarily important in my life. She's my "sister" (*wink, wink*) and she knows who she is.

If you read classic literature on friendship, you'll see that to people such as Aristotle, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Hemmingway, and much later, C. S. Lewis, true friendship was much more than the companionship often mistaken for it. The friendship we find in their writings will probably not be found in the club, sharing a girls night out with acquaintances, or lamenting at happy hour. Montaigne even expressed you might find one true friendship in every 300 years. I don't necessarily believe that to be true...I mean Laverne & Shirley, Lucy & Ethel, The cast of Friends, The Pretty Little Liars...we've got some winners there.

I guess that was a long winded and blabbering way to say be kind to one another. Cherish your friendships. Friends are the people who help celebrate your success, provide support through the tough times, and through the consistent times, are there just to help you laugh.

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall

I've heard this quote before, but after the summer I've had, it really struck me when I saw it again.

We normally think of Spring as being a time of renewal and rebirth because that's when everything starts to bloom.
But, if you think about it, fall is where that whole process starts, isn't it?
For things to have a rebirth in the spring, the leaves need to fall off the trees, the flowers need to stop blooming, and the air needs to get chilled.

This fall has brought me a number starting over moments. Deepening friendships with people, recommitting to my health, both physically and mentally.

I got the chance to go out to our Corporate Learning facility in New York when I needed it the most. It helped me change the way I think about things, people, and how I react.
There was so much that I took away from that week long experience I couldn't possibly write about it all. Two very important things that I will talk about are two quotes.

One is "Thoughts become things...choose the good ones." When you make a point to focus on the negative thoughts in your head, you give them life. You give them gravity and mass and they become real, even when they are not. It's hard to do, but if you can stop and recognize the thought and re-frame it, your outlook on life can change drastically.

The other quote, I already have hanging on my wall, but I never really made a point to look at it every day.

"Be kinder than necessary, because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."
This morning, when I was looking at the beauty of the moon and thinking about how small we are, this quote popped into my head.

There's a whole lot of evil in this world. There's a whole lot of people in this world who don't care about others. There's a whole lot of people who are hell bent on destroying others and breaking them into a million pieces.

I tend to believe, however, that for all those people in the world, there are many more good people, and we outnumber them. As I sat and looked at that moon and thought about all of the people in the world who were looking at it as well, I thought how wonderful it would be, if on a daily basis we all focused on the good. We all focused on helping a stranger, on being kinder, not only to ourselves, but to those faces in the parking lot or at the grocery store we don't give a second thought to.

What would that look like? As beautiful and immense and powerful and stunning as the moon this morning??

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."