Three weeks ago my wife and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary with meal at a new Turkish restaurant in town while our daughter was at girl guides. Later this year we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of our first becoming a couple with something a little grander but my point is we celebrated the anniversary.
In our society we celebrate and recognise wedding anniversaries, birthdays (birth anniversaries), company formation anniversaries and there now seems to be an increasing tendency to acknowledge each disaster we can find.
I wonder… When did you last celebrate, or even acknowledge, the anniversary of a friendship?
True friends
This is true love - you think this happens every day? Westley, The Princess Bride
I dare not suggest true friendship is as rare as true love, but it is highly uncommon.
Each of us will have our own definition of friendship and I’m not sure I can provide one. There is however one characteristic common to all my true friendships. I can remember in extraordinary detail when I met them.
For me it’s the difference between black and white. There are friends I can remember meeting on a work project, of at university or not at all. With my true friends I know the date (or at least month), where I was, and parts of the conversation or at the very least what we discussed.
Damien—January 1984—riding my bike with Phillip towards his house along a route we would not normally take when he spotted Damien 100m ahead of us. A couple of months later my family moved to the same street. Length of friendship, 26 years.
Helle—February 1998—visited with my host brother in Denmark to borrow for me some skis and boots for a ski trip in Norway. Later, in April 2000, Wendy and I visited Denmark and we spent a perfect day together with Helle and her boyfriend. Lenght of friendship, 22 years.
Berit—June 1988—Visited me as an exchange student in Denmark not long before she was to head to Australia herself. She’s visited Wendy and I in Australia and we in turn have visited with her again in Denmark.
Rob and Kirsty—March 1999 - First meeting Rob at a training course in Chicago, then both at their home in London.