154. Friendships

A few days ago, a former student asked me what it is that motivates me. I told him that I think people motivate me. More often that not, I feel like a salmon swimming upstream against the flow of public opinion, yet I still feel motivated by people (even when I’m going against them). And I am one to cultivate friendships. Of course, my closest friends are people who I share commonalities with, so that would be teachers, coaches, and family. But because I am now a teacher recently retired, I have always been interested in people and getting to know them where they are. Friendship is very important to me as a person and as an American. I have made friends all over the world and I work to stay in touch with those people to maintain our friendship.

What I love about my friendships is that I know people from so many different backgrounds and I have learned that we are all more similar than different. We all sleep and eat and breathe and work to maintain those functions. We all love our families and work to protect them from harm. I believe that when we look to those similarities and foster friendships based upon those things we will create fewer barriers between one another and we will help each other to stay safe. We can work to create good food, peaceful rest, and clean air for one another. Friends share things and throw aside their greed realizing that sharing makes things more pleasant and easier to get along with one another.

My best friends are my fellow teachers and my family because we share so many common interests that when we have our own eccentricities we can share those with others without feeling shame. Most friends share so many common interests that the few deviations they have from those interests lead to tolerance. So it is so important to establish friendships so that we can, in fact, develop tolerance.

Of course friends aren’t just people who tolerate one another, they love each other. My friends are people to whom I can go for help, for a laugh or for a beer. I have climbed mountains with my best friends, ran marathons with them, sat to dinner with them, prepared lesson plans with them. My best friends are those people who I call to go on trips with, to help me make a wheel chair ramp to make my doorway handicap accessible. My best friends motivate me to be a better person, someone who understands them and someone who understands me. This is true of all friends and their friendship. Friends are people who strive to help one another, who enjoy each other’s company, who share each other’s joys and sorrows and make even life’s unbearable moments bearable because they don’t leave you alone.

I believe the best people are the people who have lots of friends. I am motivated by people and making life better for all of us, but I am motivated primarily by my friends. I have several years left in me and I plan on spending those years cultivating the friendships I have and developing new friendships so that I don’t end up leaving this world lonely or alone but that I leave it a better place than when I found it. There is no doubt that is an impossible task if I am intolerant and lonely, but with friends it is more than just a possibility, it is a reality. I am so thankful for all of my friendships. My American dream is to be a friend.