It’s difficult for me to confess that I am not all that adept at maintaining my friendships. I don’t mean simply staying in touch with the periodic email or phone call, but really staying better informed and involved in the lives of the people whom I continue to trust and care for deeply. I intend to call, I remind myself to write or send that photo, then three months have gone by in a blur of work and classes and three months — three months! — are gone. It has been weighing on my mind more heavily with each passing year.
Friendships develop and change, are tested by time and circumstance, and — sometimes — they die away. We all have work, families, and responsibilities of our own, but there is little to explain or excuse how I’ve let such good people slip out of my life. It’s all too easy to take for granted the people that we care about.
I can think of several people I wish to reconnect with, but have I been neglectful for too long? Thanks to the wonders of the internet and social networking sites, I’ve located some of these folks and made initial attempts to reconnect and yet… I backed off due to a variety of concerns, some so extraordinarily lame that I can’t even bring myself to list them here. There is so much risk in the kind of vulnerability it takes to reach across the spaces that lie between us and sometimes I just don’t feel brave enough to face the potential rejection ahead.
Last night, I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy for, oh, the nineteen hundreth time now. In the lead up to the final diversion that would help Frodo complete his quest, Gimli said, “Certainty of death, small chance of success… what are we waiting for?” Indeed.
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