Friendship is truly one of the
best gifts we can give ourselves.
Great friends enrich our minds, inspire our
imaginations, and
enlighten our spirits.
A chief event of
life is the day in which we have
encountered
one of our best friends for the first time. To be
sure,
friendship is a universal and all encompassing
topic for each
and every one of us. Companionship is essential to
a full and
rich life. It ranks right up there with fulfilling
work and good
health. In fact, researchers have found that
satisfying
friendships can improve our health. Contrarily,
having no
intimate people in our lives will impoverish us and
be
detrimental to our well-being.
Given how important friendship
is in our lives, it's interesting
to note how little has been written on the subject.
Compare, for
example, the number of books written on how to
handle money
to the number of books on how to create and
maintain great
friends. Yet in many ways friendship is much more
valuable
than money. Indeed, our human interactions,
particularly those
with close friends, provide most of the joys or
disappointments
we receive from life.
As Portland resident Lenny Dee
told an Utne Reader reporter,
"I have always thought you could invest your
energies in
making money or making friends. And they achieve
much the
same ends — security, new experiences, personal
options,
travel, and so forth. I have always found it more
fulfilling to
make friends."
Great friends will appear in
your life when you are doing the
right things for them to appear. While it may
appear accidental,
it's possible to dramatically increase the chances
of meeting a
new friend or two — and keeping them as friends
forever. This
is the really cool part: Once you understand the
fundamental
elements of friendship, you may never have to be
without any
true friends. Ever again!
