Don't regret the Distance to old Friends - you cannot help it!

I know I have sometime contemplated in similar ways about friendship on my blog but today I feel I have spent time thinking about it again, so I wanted to share. We all know what a great friendship looks like and we all know that there is also this kind of friendship with which you sometimes wonder why you two are still connected at all. That’s the kind of friends I would like to talk about today.

Such friends are often people whom you have known since you were small. You played together when you were little, grew up together for some years but then your ways parted. Maybe it was a neighbour, maybe you went to primary school together. Maybe you even were together later or met at a later point, were close for a while. The main point however is that you are not anymore close. You actually don’t feel close anymore.

You have a certain attachment to this person because of the good times you spent together. At this moment however, you know exactly that you don’t share similar thoughts. You think completely different than the other one! Your thoughts go in one way and his or her in the opposite direction. You will say one thing but already know that the other one doesn’t approve. In the same way the other one tells you about something that you are absolutely not fond of!

In this situation, you cannot be as relaxed, as free and as comfortable with each other as you once were. You probably miss those days or think of them in a way that sometimes is like melancholy – but you cannot bring them back! The changes that have brought you to this point, to be the person who you are, are not something that you would like to revert. You don’t want to be the person anymore who you once were. And the other one changed as well. He went down another road!

I don’t actually wish to go back to my old days. When I think of great times with old friends, it makes me happy, not sad. I know that my present is an equally great time and I expect the same of the future, too!

Nevertheless there are such friends in my life, too, and I have more than once wondered about the little rituals I have with them: a phone call every month or every week. A visit – be it once a year, twice a month or rather irregularly. And always the good wishes for birthdays of course. This all with someone that I don’t really feel close anymore, especially from my thoughts?

Yes, because it doesn’t cost me anything. I can only gain from this. It is very little effort to pick up the phone, it is not much more effort to pay a visit or receive one. For this, a connection remains, be it only based on such rituals, and I can still call this person my friend. My old school mate, my former neighbour, my previous travel companion.

We were close once, we are not now but we may be close again. Or maybe not – but what is there to lose? You can only gain love and that is always worth it!