“What can you do today to express the appreciation you have for those who are important to you and who you might take for granted in your life?”

This was today’s question from the priest during his homily this morning and it could not have been timed more perfectly. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this very thought.

I’ve spent much of the last year reading and working on the daily pages of a motivational book: Achieve Anything in Just One Year by Jason Harvey. I would read each day’s quotation and do the exercise, but sometimes the activity is just too hard mentally to do and I would put the book down for an extended period.

Most recently, I left off at Day 127. The quotation for Day 127 was: “True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost” by Charles Caleb Colton. On this day they are asking about friends and friendships, their importance and how to keep them. One thing that I was very wary about was the phrasing of the first line after the quotation:

“How many friends do you have?”

I have never liked this kind of question. I think it comes mostly from the influx of social media being our barometer for modern friendship. For me personally, I don’t like counting friends. I also really dislike it when outernet friends and family differentiate between Facebook and ‘real’ friends or ‘internet friends’ and ‘real’ friends. These kinds of designations have continually made me feel awkward. It feels as if they’re saying that some of my friends are ‘lesser than’ and in my heart they’re not and have never been.

I think the expectation is that at my age (and boy do I hate that phrase), I’m expected to live in the past. Friends from high school and college are surprised at the level in which I’ve embraced modern social media meeting places and introductions to friends who will be lifelong friends. My friends range in age from 19 – 85, some closer than others, but that is always the way of friendships.

We connect on different levels with different people. People with kids, parents from school, church groups, book clubs, the cashier at the supermarket that we see weekly or sometimes daily; that friend of a friend who liked that thing on your Facebook or that reblogger on Tumblr who you discover is the same age, has kids like you and understands completely the joy and benefits that is fandom. I wish I had Tumblr twenty years ago, although I suppose that if Tumblr was around twenty years ago, there’d be a new one that we’d all have to learn anyway.

My friends give me great joy. Watching them do happy, watching them create, arguing about this fandom thing or that political thing, debates, discussions, philosophy, religion and whatever else; you name it, it is there and it is glorious to see and hear so many differing opinions and respectfully disagree.

I have high school and college friends, Scadians and Daydians and now the Posse, but those distinctions are a shorthand for the commonality of who we are to each other, how we met and how we played, and many of them overlap. There are friends and close friends and a best friend. There are friends who communicate every day, either by text or phone. There are friends who communicate once a month or less. There are call backs I should make more frequently and slack I should give more often, but in all of the mistakes I make, these are the people who are ceaselessly there when it truly counts. And knowing that, having that faith in the friendships I’ve found, being lucky enough to be a part of is one of the most special and important things in my life.

But that’s what makes these exercises so hard. “Write about your friendships.”

How am I supposed to do that?!

I can’t possibly put down on paper how much my friends mean in my life. There aren’t enough adjectives to describe the family of friends that I have.

I’ve never looked for more friends as this exercise suggests I should be doing. I’m happy with the friends I’ve found. We’ve passed by the millions of random chances that threw us onto each other’s paths and we wandered into the others’ lives precisely when they were supposed to and became the support for one another.  And over time, those friendships change. They deepen. The trust grows and the comfort of a text message or a voice on the other end of a phone call is a deep soul thing and to have the privilege of that with more than one person is truly a blessing. It is unbelievable to think of the randomness and the beauty in the finding of each of them.

There are ups and downs and misunderstandings and disagreements and laughter and hugs and forgiveness and I’ve found it all with the most eclectic group.

I often think that friendship is deeper than any other kind of relationship. We choose our friends and they choose us. Think about wedding vows and relate them to your closest friendships: honor and keep, sickness and health, richer and poorer. They are there through all of it, helping us in the big ones and all of the little ones. They are comfort and joy and support through the sadness and trouble that inevitably stop by in every life, but they are also the best of life. Without them, we truly are nothing.

Alone can be good for short spurts. Time to think and contemplate and find your inner places, your belonging places. But the best parts are the places with friends; when you fit. It fit in so few places that when I fit, I can feel it. It’s only happened two or three times in the last few years and the calm it’s brought me is palpable. The laughter over the stupidest things you’d never laugh about without these wonderful people. It’s the McDonald’s drive thru, sleeping on shoulders, long hugs, wiped tears, supportive whispers and autocorrected texts and so much more.

So, back to the priest’s question of the day:

“What can you do today to express the appreciation you have for those who are important to you and who you might take for granted in your life?”

I think we all do the best we can with what we have. That’s not always the best there is, but it’s all we can do. I try to appreciate my friends in a public way. I think they know in their hearts how much I appreciate their presence in my life and their friendship.  I’m extraordinarily grateful to my friends, having them, their friendship, their being always by my side; I just have a terrible time expressing that out loud. I can thank acts pretty well, but thanking people simply for being themselves seems funny to me.  Some people I can express it to, but my personality is to stay quiet, draw no attention, and if I’ve been quiet and unemotional with someone all my life (my siblings for example), I still have a hard time expressing what I feel. I find it easier with newer friends because we’ve started out in that candid, more emotionally honest place.

When my friends are hurting, I’m hurting and I want to help. I offer even though they know that I’m there to help with anything. And they have helped me, more than I ever could have expected from someone. With anything. And everything. From moral support to financial support and everything in between.

When parents die and couples divorce; when kids grow up and move away; when we retire and travel the world or just visit the library or get a part time job, our friends are always there; constantly with us and for us and we are there for them and that is the most brilliant thing I can think of in a friendship.