Purpose VII: Friend

(Another in our continuing series of "Let's Make a New Life", based on Craft the Life You Want: Creating a Blueprint for Your Future at artofmanliness.com. Today's exercise, based on prioritization of roles, is to define a purpose for each role).

Today's Purpose: Friend (and counselor).

Another one of those roles I look forward to with relish

I enjoy friendship. I really do - not the tepid acquaintance that our society so often offers as friendship, but the true sharing of two souls in relationship.

I was very lucky that in growing up, I always had friends - good friends. I had the same group of friends in various clumps of my life: all through grammar school one set, all through high school another, all through college another, all through Old Home another, and now here. I'm fortunate that some of my best friends continue to be some of my oldest friends even today (Uisdean Ruadh) would fall here)while others (Otis, Songbird, Bogha Frois, Silverline) are of more recent vintage but equally valuable.

And part of friendship - a part which I relish the most, not just with old or dear friends but with those everyday friends we make in each waystation of our life - is counseling, of being a friendly ear, of being able to listen and help to lift a burden (if I have some advice, great - but sometimes the greatest thing of all is simply being able to be that listening ear, that shoulder to beat on). It is a singular honor - and pleasure - to be chosen by someone to be worthy of their trust in revealing something of themselves, of their inner struggles, to you.


My wished-for eulogy: "TB was friend who you could go to with your problems and always listened, who had advice - or a joke - as needed. He was the sort of loyal and good friend that everyone needs to have."

A pipe dream? Do I rate friendship too highly? Possibly, but I don't think so. Friends are the chosen family of our souls. The friends we choose and keep are the ones we can go to time and time again when life chews us up and spits us out - or when life grants us golden sunshine and rainbows. Friends can support us in ways and times that even our family cannot.

I want to be that kind of friend.