Unexpected Help & Surprising Friendships

Today I will start by answering the question that I have been asked a few times since I started writing my posts and that is, how do I decide what to write about? The truth is that every week I stress about what topic to choose, so that I can research a bit and share something worthwhile and most weeks, I fail to come up with a subject or run out of time to do my research. But the beauty of this is that every week something happens, that stands out especially among all the other little somethings that I experience and I find myself on a Thursday evening writing about that, which normally transforms into a combination of thoughts related to the matter, while after a few lines I normally digress into my ramblings.

This week my little rambling starts with my son asking me whether he can invite his closest friends over for a weekend sleepover for his 14th birthday. Sure, I said, until panic hit me when, while picking me up for a huge hug to say thank you (yes – he is taller than me), he commented that we will have to think about how they are all going to sleep in our flat…apparently there is going to be 13 of them!

But as the panic subsided, and I told myself that they are 14 and they are probably not as picky as me and all they care about is spending time together, my trail of thought somehow jumped from that and I started thinking about friendships.

When we are young children in the playground, things are pretty simple. There is a beautiful purity when a little toddler approaches a total stranger with no hesitation at all and asks them if they want to be their friend. Teenage years, when we are feeling among other things unbeatable, confident and curious, are filled with friendships easily made and sometimes easily forgotten. Then adulthood follows, filled with what is called life, that comes with engagements, marriages, relocations, careers, families, divorces and any other form of relationships that influence who we choose to spend time with, either due to work, or our children or our hobbies, and these connections evolve to form our friendships. Of course, if we are lucky, there are some few people who we grew up with or who we know from our past lives, pre-adulthood, that we can still count as friends.

But, for me, the majority of the people I once upon a time thought of as friends, close friends even, are people who I have lost touch with. People who I thought would be part of my life forever, just aren’t any more. Either due to physical proximity, or because of them changing or simply because I am now a different person to who I once was. I know that friends come and go and I don’t think that I should fight for them to stay, but it is sad to think that a lot of the people who once meant so much, nowadays mean so little.

These days, my chosen friends are people who I mostly met though being a parent and watching our children grow up together. Through parenthood, I found a new appreciation for finding people – people to trust, to talk to, to laugh with, to make memories with, to do life with. And though my life at this stage led me to consciously choose my current friendships, my friends these days are not the people who I once thought I would or could ever spend time with. But that is acceptable, because I constantly grow and learn things about myself and the world, through these connections.

And then…very recently, maybe because of my ramblings or through the safe environment of our little group or even the core principles of the company we work for, people I would never have expected to be friends with, have popped up from nowhere and have changed my life for the better.

People who have offered help or comfort to me when they didn’t have to, or people who generously gave their time to teach me things I didn’t know how to do, or people who have offered to mentor me, or people who willingly encouraged me to keep writing though constructive criticism and compliments, or people who have many times acted with so much compassion to show that they aren’t going anywhere….These unexpected acts have led to precious unpredicted friendships that are day-to-day encouraging me to get out of my comfort zone, share ideas, perspectives and learn for one another’s lives. These friendships have surprised me. They are a great reminder that support doesn’t always come from where we expect it or plan for it to come.

Of course, I am not naïve and I’m not trying to recommend that we all go ahead and befriend every person who walks by or who is nice to us…but remember that people that surround us, even those that may not even say hi sometimes, people we least expect to, will in time of need rise to the occasion and try to help us overcome challenges, power past barriers, and create opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

So, with that I will close, hoping that some of you can at least relate to what I am saying above.