The Magic of Friendship

Life’s lessons teach us things all of the time. At almost 52, I’m still learning: from mistakes and successes, from experiences of day-to-day life and just generally, from things that life throws at me. We’re all students of life-long learning and how dull life would be if we knew it all. It would also make us rather irritating to others. Nobody likes a Know It All.

Different parts of our lives have different things within them that we learn from daily, and recently it’s the thing labelled ‘Friendship’, from which I’m growing and learning most; its presence providing such a wonderful source of personal nourishment, support, warmth and love. The beautiful thing about friendship, is that in a healthy one, turn taking and balance in what you’re able to offer one another, is woven tightly within it.

I feel very grateful that at the top of my friendship list are my family members: my husband, my children, my mam, my mother-in-law, my sisters, my brother, my sister-in-laws and brother-in-laws. Of course those friendship relationships have different elements to them than the non-blood friendships in my life but they’re an integral part of my support network and I count myself extremely fortunate in that respect.

And that is part of the magic of friendship. It comes in different guises, varieties and types. Some friends I see very regularly, others who live further afield, I see less so. But wherever they live, an integral thread to a good friendship is that time between seeing one another doesn’t count. You take up where you left off with no guilt attached to who last contacted who!

Genuine friendship has another beautiful kind of magic attached to it: joy and happiness when things are going well for you and the warmth of hugs, empathy, understanding and a shoulder to cry on when things are going badly. With strong friendships, the laughter is louder and the sorrow so much easier to bear during the highest of highs and lowest of lows in life’s colourful tapestry.

What good friendships don’t have, is a place for jealousy or resentment. Friendships with those elements to them are harmful and draining and as the word in the middle of friendship states, end eventually.

So, today is my day for saying ‘thank you’ to everybody in my life whom I lucky enough to count as a friend. I appreciate you, I love you and I am such a better person for knowing you.

Reach out to your friends today, whoever or wherever in the world they are because without friends, life would seem so much less magical. The Beatles were right…..we all get by with a little help from our friends.

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