Friendship - Never To Be Taken For Granted

It's amazing how easy it is to take things for granted. We expect that electricity will come out of the little hole in the wall when we plug something in, the car will start the first time, and emails will arrive and be sent hassle-free. Kids, of course, expect that their mum will be there 24/7. And, even those of us with domestic blindness, will know that help finding stuff (even if what we're looking for is right in front of our noses) is not far away.

There are, however, some things we should never take for granted. One of those is the friendship of others - according to Epicurus, one of life's greatest pleasures. But we need to work at it.

It's more than what Aristotle recommended about keeping a friendship solid by consuming more than one and a half bushels of salt together. It's developing friendships over different age groups. And, when one friend departs for what ever reason, that he or she is replaced with an other. It's hardly a recent revelation that, as we age, we need a friendship-building strategy. More than 250 years ago, Samuel Johnson was emphasising the need to make new acquaintances through life.

I met a fellow recently who told me that he and his wife always attended local dances in their area and looked forward to the local 'ball season'. Their motivation, he told me, was threefold. The first was that dancing was an activity that they enjoyed. The second was that he and his wife needed to make the effort to network with people from a wide variety of areas. He said that if they didn't, others would respect their privacy and leave them alone. Their third motivation was their need to have something to look forward to. And when one event was over, there always was another one to look forward to. Almost instinctively, these folk knew that they could not take for granted being seen as key people in their community without making an effort to be included.

There is another good reason why mixing with others and making and maintaining friendships has much to recommend it. That added extra is creativity. No one has ever been able to say where an original idea comes from. Yet mixing with others, it seems, can aid the creative process where new ideas flourish. The idea-initiators may not be aware of their contributions, but that doesn't really matter.