All posts tagged: friendship

Why I Don’t Have a Best Friend.

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It used to bother me that I didn’t have a “bestie”. I thought I was a little bit less, somehow, because I couldn’t name someone as my exclusive nearest and dearest in the realms of friendship. You know the kind. The kind who proudly declared that I was their BFF and I could declare it back. Joined at the hip. We might have crawled around in the sun together as babies while our mums yakked on a picnic rug. And as we grew up, the bank of shared experiences made us inseparable. I didn’t have that. Perhaps it was because my parents seemed to move house every two years (and often that meant schools too), or perhaps it has more to do with my personality. I had a special friendship in high school. We were the only newbies in a class full of established friendships. We were tight. But that was my teens, navigating the complexities of growing up. Now, right now, I don’t have a best friend and I’m good with that. What I do have …

The Measure of a True Friend

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I have acoupla thousand ‘friends’ across my different social media platforms and other connections. As a measure of my friendship support, most would say I’m in a good position, right? Perhaps you’re the same. Relatively well endowed in the ‘friend’ or ‘follower’ department. But what happens when things get tough? Most of us don’t share the reality of life on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat… we share the highlights reel. And in this virtual world, many of our friends are like those noddy dogs on the dashboard of old folks’ cars; constantly agreeing, liking what you post, commenting with little heart emoticons. We collect friends and likes as a hoarder collects things. They seem necessary. They make us feel good. But when when life gets hard, they are a poor substitute for quality. What does it mean to be a true friend? In a world afraid to say the hard things for fear of sounding judgemental, offensive or even tight-laced, I would venture to say that a true friend is one who is unafraid of speaking the …

The NY Resolution that Exceeded Expectation.

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Flicking to my journal entries from this time last year was a deflating exercise – not only because there were so few pages to flick through, but because the scribblings under the heading New Years Resolutions were largely unrealised. I made some feeble initial efforts, but life shouldered in on these well-intentioned plans to build character, skill and achievement. Oh well, there’s always 2016! But I want to tell you about the one aspiration that did become a reality – and so much better than I could have anticipated. I love reading. For me, the holiday sensation comes when I am diving headlong into fiction narrative – from the comfort of an armchair, banana lounge or hammock. I read to escape. Which is why, pre-2015, were you to espouse the merits of so-and-so’s latest autobiography, self-help book or account of lifechange, my eyes would have glazed over. I wanted to like those books. I wanted to allow my life to be altered by them. I wanted to rave with friends over the way those books had opened …