March 6, 2006

March 6, 2006

Saving Friendship

I just got off the phone with RW. RW is one of my greatest dearest friends. He no longer lives here in LA. As a matter of fact he has been living in Phoenix now for more then half the time I have known him. RW and I met at a random pool party 4 1/2 years ago. I don't know how we became such fast friends because our meeting was the kind of meeting you have a thousand times in your life. You are at a social gathering and you strike up a conversation with someone else...you both have probably been drinking a little or perhaps you are just in a good mood because its a relaxing celebratory environment. You talk and debate and perhaps discover common ground, maybe even enough common ground to agree to hang out at a later date, but rarely does that later date ever materialize again.

In RW and I's case, we actually did end up chatting (literally because the common ground we discovered is that we had already probably met anonymously because we frequented the same WBS chat rooms) two days after the party and agreed to go check out a comedy club that night. Ever since then we have grown as friends, discovering that we are cosmic twins with spiritual and emotional paths that frequently converge and then diverge only to converge again.

So like I said, I just got off the phone with RW and I am in unusually high spirits. Isn't it amazing how theraputic and invigorating a long talk with a good friend can be.

When I was a teenager I would sit and talk with friends for hours and I am certain that most of those discussions did more to increase my insecurity and lessen my sense of individuality and unique identity. But at the time I thought my friends were the most important thing in the world. They had so much influence over me, and I didn't feel like much without them. Ten years later, I am 27 years old, and I take my friendships for granted all the time, especially people like RW who I don't see very often, but they are actually more important to me then friendship ever was. It's funny but the more you grow as a human and assert your individuality, the more your relationships become rewarding and important. When you are a teenager running with a crowd...many of your 'close' friends can be almost interchangeable although you never believe it at the time. But as you get older, friends carve out unique and special niches that really firmly plant them in your life. Its odd, but you have to give people a unique role in you life before they can even become special to you...otherwise they are just generic and replaceable.

-dred