FRIEND-ABLE I have found it to be true most of the time: "No one is a complete failure. They can always be used as a bad example."
We see it work out best, of course, when we are looking at, talking about, watching other people at work or play. We seldom wonder how we appear in the eyes of other men and women who area our friends and associates. That's another word we tend to kick around a bit too freely I think.
Who, exactly do we call our "friends"? And, who, please list for me to those whom you include among your associates.
Maybe some of them would rather not have anything to do with the likes of you.
We are also guilty of bending the meaning of some words to better fit them to our idea of what we wanted them mean. Some people gather friend " to be used as needed." That is certainly not a firm basis for friendships of a durable nature. One tends to maintain a life-long pledging sequence seeking "brothers" who will have connection for your career. Age elements creep in, as well. We choose different friends as we get older and they us. You can sense that has arrived when people speaking of you say you are "looking good" rather than that you are "good looking."
Look at yourself carefully when you deliberately think about getting new or added friends. Yes, such need do arise. I know people who have moved just a few blocks from their older neighborhood; made little or no effort to build new friendships and now wonder why people could be so heartless as to ignore them in their old age. A discontented person finds no
easy chair anywhere in a home furnished other than with friendships in progress and those embodied in memories.
We cannot, of course, count on too many occasions
in a lifetime which will yield only good cheer and happiness. So it is with friendships. Some will be bright and sunny while others will prove to be unpleasant. In this time when our television producers are over accenting "realism" a preset a-day maxim might be: "You have to expect the bad with the lousy." There will be some of it, anyway.
Your prime concern:
Be sure you are friend-able.
A.L.M. April 1, 2006 [c402wds]
