Find people who make you better.
—Michelle Obama
Build Friendships
I have a theory about friendship: It resists the ordinary rules of time and space. Once you’ve forged a true friendship, it has a kind of timeless presence. Life can be unexpected, and we can find ourselves on paths that lead us away from those who were once part of our daily existence.
This happens a lot in my life, and I used to think it was because I’m a terrible friend. Now I know the truth about friendship: True friendships have a way of waiting for us, unbothered by silence or distance, ready to be picked up as if no time has passed.
Because living an unhurried life is a priority for me, I tend to shy away from social media. This makes it difficult to stay up to date with my friends around the world. The irony is not lost on me that this is also the very reason I’m able to make deep friendships.
Over the years, Andy and I have constantly opened our home to others. We’ve hosted exchange students who just needed a place to stay for a handful of days and those who have become our forever family after a year in our home. We’ve provided respite care for foster kids. We’ve hosted Dessert Club for high school kids and their friends—a weekly get-together where teens arrive and eat my latest sweet experiment and laugh at the stories Andy tells and then share their own. We have Tuesday Dinner with an eclectic group from all walks of life. We invite international students to have Thanksgiving dinner with us when the local university is closed for the holiday and their homes are too far to visit. Just this week a friend unexpectedly showed up and joined us for leftovers night.
It is beautiful when we are together; it is heartbreaking when life takes us on different paths. There is always a hole in my heart when this happens. I’ve learned to be grateful for the heartache because it means that I loved well.
Recently, a friend I met in 2012 has been on my mind. He was 15 and on an exchange year. Although he didn’t live with us, he spent a lot of time with us, and we traveled many places together. I checked my WhatsApp thread and found the last time we talked was in 2020. How had it been so long?
An earlier version of me would have decided that it had been too long. I would have justified not reaching out by thinking there was no reason to do so and that he’d probably forgotten about me. However, I decided to put my friendship theory to the test. I typed out a message: Are you out there? You’re on my mind today.
Later that evening, I received a message back. He wrote—
That is pretty remarkable timing—I’ve been wanting to get in touch the last couple of days, but the very reason I’ve been wanting to get in touch is also the reason why it’s currently tricky to get stuff done…
Then he attached photos of his newborn baby. He’d been a dad for a week, and I blinked back tears to realize how close I had been to missing this milestone.
Life is busy, and it is full of people who are just waiting to be seen and loved. Let’s not be so busy that we miss the opportunities to build true friendships. And let’s remember that once these friendships are forged, they are unbothered by time and distance.
Ruth Ayres
Editor in Chief
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Quote It:
The part can never be well unless the whole is well.
—Plato
That’s all for this week!
