Neal and I have been talking a lot lately about the nature of people: some who have the inability to change, others who have the inability to recognize change in others; some who attempt to appear confident on the outside but betray their true lack of confidence by becoming overly emotional about someone who doesn’t agree with them on any tiny opinion, others who recognize the difference between a true belief that is strongly held and an opinion (that can be just as strongly held but doesn’t have to be shared by everyone around them); some who do well with long distance, relying more on phone calls, email, and other true forms of communication in order to continue establishing and maintaining a real, living, working relationship, others who refuse to maintain and instead allow relationships to become stagnant, relying on old cues and roles instead of realizing that change can and probably has occurred.
People change and grow, I hope, each and every day. Not just each year or each month or each long span of time. Each day I hope we learn something about ourselves that allows us to step outside and become better, perhaps more mature and accepting of ourselves and others.
I think we forget this happens to not only ourselves but others as well. We get so caught up in what we think is “real, important life” that we don’t take the time to edify what we already have that is important: the other people in our lives. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve written on friendship, relationships in general. They are definitely important—or should be.
Then why is it that we just rely on the past and feel that is enough to hold a friendship? If all you want to do is relive old times, go to your high school or college reunion. Friendships aren’t only about the past.
Creating, maturing, and maintaining friendships are the same as planting a seed, watering the plant, feeding it, tending it, and watching it grow to fruition and beauty. We don’t stop after planting the seed. We don’t stop after watering it once. We don’t believe the plant will stop growing at…this…point…right…here! and then cease to grow more, staying in this one spot until I return to revel in its beauty again.
We know that the plant will live or die with each thing we do to nuture it. We want the tree to grow mature and strong, reaching long arms into the heavens with grace and beauty; we don’t want a redwood that stays four feet high and can be easily broken with a light wind.
Friendships require maintenance–food and water, if you will. Perhaps a little pruning here and there when we get a little out of line. (Honesty is definitely an important part of growth and strength of relations.)
So why do we forget this and attempt to just relive the day we planted the seed? Watered it? Fed it a little bit of mulch and then walked away?
“Oh, my dear plant,” the woman says to the decaying stump, “do you remember when I first planted the seed that created you? It was so tiny and great and beautiful!”
I’m sure the dead tree is excited to hear about its past, but perhaps not when it’s becoming mulch itself.
Reach out and strengthen your friends and family. Call them, email them. Do they know that you are “thinking” about them? No? Believe me, it is not the thought that counts in relationships. I have had two people that I cared about very much die when they were long distance from me and I heard about each death a bit later than I cared to. Could I go to their grave and say, “I had been thinking about you”? Does that count? Does it matter at that point?
Contact now. Regrets don’t a pretty luggage set make, and lack of communication is the contingent of weeds to clog your garden or choke the tree’s chance of growing in sunlight when instead it’s overgrown in shade.
Neal and I went to a family reunion of mine this past weekend and I realized the strength of love and missing someone can be alleviated by just a bit of contact here and there.
Lack of communication doesn’t mean you’re too busy to someone who’s hurting and needs a shoulder: It means that you don’t care, and if that isn’t true, it’s your place to prove to them that you are there for them instead of making them chase you down or just letting them feel alone and forgotten.
Hi Jess, I just wanted to drop by and say thank you for your encouraging comment, I’m not sure when you left it because I haven’t checked my own blog in awhile, though I always check yours =) I have been reading you for awhile and I think you are an incredibly insightful person…Thanks again for the encouragement, it’s weird but even though you are basically a stranger to me it means a lot to know that you feel I can do this.
Oh, and I definitely agree with you on how relationships take work…this becomes especially true as we get older and our friends who we grew up down the street from start to become scattered all over the country. But in a way it’s nice to find out who will devote that energy to keeping up with your life even when it’s not easy.
Thanks for getting back to me. I was actually quite worried about you after reading your last post and then not seeing anything for quite a while!
It definitely has been interesting, seeing who is willing to make an extra effort to show that they care for you enough to the point of taking time out of their busy schedules to keep in touch. Two of my closest friends are extremely busy and I know this; however, we are making it a point to keep up with each other and ensure that we are growing as friends and maintaining something that has taken years to build. Thanks for mentioning that, as it brings a point closer to my own heart of knowing that people either care enough to give of themselves or they don’t. I really, really identify with the last line of your comment and it has opened my eyes wider to what is going on in relationships around me as well. It’s not always easy…but if it’s worth it, you’ll do it.
I often say that one makes time for what is important. I had a friend say that he just forgot to keep up with me or was busy or whatever but I had evidence to the contrary within his relationships with other people who weren’t even his close friends, that he was making time for them, etc. I said, “The evidence is in your actions: You make time for what is important to you and for who is important to you.” We need to hear the truth in friendship more than anything. Since that time, our friendship has grown and become something awesome and wonderful: We both made time for what was important to us–each other.
Hi, I found this through Mir’s site. I absolutely loved this post — it is so true. I’ve been working through some “issues” with a long-time friend and this is what I’ve wanted to say to her. And your comment above — even more so. I think that we tend to neglect the long-term friends because we know that they’ll be around for the long haul, and it somehow seems more critical to nurture newer friendships, like they’re more fragile for some reason. You nailed it right on the head.
Thanks, Terri! It is definitely hard to say these things to your friends when it’s needed the absolute most. And, even if you do say them? What’s to say that they will understand, will listen, or will take what you have to say to heart? All we can do is try and let them know that lack of contact can be extremely painful, especially when we need them the most.
Long-term friendships can be very easy to ignore, just as you said. For that reason, they are all the more critical to actually pay attention to…and to show your love and attention to.
When you said, “we know that they’ll be around for the long haul”? It just reminded me of instances where I’ve wanted to rekindle a long-term friendship only to find that things had changed too much–we were too different to pick up where we left off. Sometimes growing together can be more beneficial than just assuming that both of you can just start from where you left off. I met the friend I’m thinking of for supper one day and…realized that I couldn’t resume a friendship after so long without meaningful contact. I was disappointed and upset, sad that things couldn’t continue–or even restart from scratch. Too much time had past and too many things had happened to grow us both in opposite directions.