As Valuable As Gold

While in San Diego last week I was fortunate to spend some time with old friends I haven’t seen in a few years. We talked on the phone some, but spending time together in each other’s presence makes all the difference. What’s really nice, too, is that good friends can pick up right where they left off, as if there weren’t years of separation. The only difference it seems is that you’re getting older and the thought of seeing friends from college makes you think you might want to color your hair to cover the gray or take Leptovox to lose some of that weight one gets when you are over 40. Yikes! It doesn’t really matter though, because when you see your friends, no matter how much they, or you, have changed physically, you are are still as dear to each other as you were “back in the day” when you were roaming around the college campus together.

One of my dear friends, Yuko, said the most wonderful thing to me about our friendship. We have known each other almost 20 years, but almost half of that has been spent apart and until this year we were rather distant. Life circumstances made it difficult for us to spend any time together or communicate much in the last nine years. In the years prior to me moving away from San Diego we had become very close friends. Time and distance had not changed that closeness for either of us even though we had not communicated much. I was not surprised by that, but she was, and I’m glad she shared with me how she felt. Some people can make close friends easily, but others like myself and my friend find it not so simple a task. It is important to hang onto these friendships, no matter how difficult, because they are as valuable as true gold. The longer you hold onto it the more valuable it grows.