Crossing the Street.

We garner friends for different reasons or needs. Some are people with whom we share a long history - we grew up together in the same neighbourhood, attending the same schools, hanging out in eachother's backyards. The bond is often of similar childhood events, shared locality and possibly nothing more. If you're really really lucky you may find your lifelong kindred friend in your old neighbourhood, but most likely you have to venture off that safe street.


Someone once said: "Similarities create friendship's while differences hold them together." Maybe the differences have to be found a couple of streets over, once you leave your front yard to expand your boundaries, ideas, values, and life experiences. Along the way, paths cross with others who often are asking the same questions, who share similar belief systems or are respectful and receptive to exploring another way of looking at life. Most challenge your own thinking by tossing you a few new crumbs to whet your appetite.

They become part of your journey, for short bursts of time, or perhaps for the long haul. It all depends on your shared circumstances. It depends on your destination. No matter how long a person touches your life as a friend they cannot cross your path of destiny without leaving some kind of mark on it forever. Kindred friends? They are the people who can reflect the best in you. Each one leaves a unique footprint. Each one impacts how you look at the world, and sometimes how you react to it.


Similiarities............differences.............respect for both...........a short path to a warm welcome.

It’s funny. For a long time, I lived with a myth in my head that you get to an age when you don’t develop new friendships. Who knows where this bizarre misconception evolved? Who knows where any of those goofy notions come from? No matter……it did and I did think that way. Luckily that spell was broken. I have learned that new friendships can be established as often as you allow them to. It may be more difficult however, to meet new people if you remain only within your daily realm. Yes……you may have to leave the safe street and venture out to another avenue, open to differences, receptive to an accent that may have a different twang to it.

We tend to live our routines, surrounded by the same individuals day in and out. Consequently, we can easily lose our confidence in reaching out. It does takes effort and a dash of daringness to risk holding out a flowering branch to a new person. Is it the possibility of rejection that stop us in our tracks? Or maybe we’re too busy in our lives, or have forgotten how to leave our safe back yards…………. I don’t know. We get too comfy to bother, even though the opportunity to learn, to grow and to acquire the gifts one can feel only through a friendship........... maybe all these reasons stop us from reaching out.

What I do believe NOW is that a new friend………you know the kind? Those kindreds whom you feel you’ve known forever (or possibly in a past life perhaps??)………..one who reflects the best I have to offer and I to them…..well, they are WELL worth the jaunt across the street to break bread and drink wine with.




Oh, the comfort,

the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person;

having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,

but to pour them all out,

just as they are,

chaff and grain together,

knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them,

keep what is worth keeping,

and then,

with a breath of kindness,

blow the rest away.

George Eliot.