"Best friend" can sound like a silly, childish term to many people. It conjures up images of playground arguments between little girls, but it is a term that is dear to my heart.
I met Jocelyn in 1974, in Mrs. Ball's kindergarten class. I was four years old and she was five. Over the course of a year spent huddled over the sand table and the craft centre, we became friends.
I can't remember who started the first conversation or shared the first cookie, but it stuck. We liked being together and we became inseparable.
Our first grade teacher, though, was afraid that our friendship would be bad for both of us. Mrs. Lyon was afraid that I would never learn to talk. I was painfully shy and rarely spoke out loud. Jocelyn had no such compunctions.
I was the quiet, creative soul. She was the extrovert and the daredevil. I was easily frightened by things that weren't familiar and people I didn't know. Jocelyn never seemed to be scared of much of anything, but she took a lot of spills. She was my defender. I was her comforter. With time, I found ways to express myself and Jocelyn learned to dodge bullets.
We have been best friends for years, time and distance notwithstanding. We have both grown and changed, but the bond we share has only grown stronger. When things are going great, I know who I want to tell. When things go wrong, I know who I want to call.
Not everyone is so fortunate.
No man is an Island, entire of it self . . .
~John Donne
In a world which has a population rapidly approaching 6 billion people, it seems strange to think that anyone could be lonely. But most of us are.
Dr. Dean Ornish - a leading author on exercise, stress-management and low-fat eating - sees loneliness as a legitimate threat to human health: "The real epidemic isn't physical heart disease. It' s spiritual heart disease - loneliness and isolation."
On the Internet this sense of isolation is profound. How many of us have found a chat room with a lone occupant asking "Is anybody there?"
Our lives are crowded with people, yet what we crave is intimacy - the certain knowledge that someone is familiar with us, that someone knows who we are and cares about what happens to us. We are designed to connect with other human beings.
Friendship is a virtue . . . and also it is one of the most indispensable requirements of life.
~Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
Friendship can be one of the most powerful and long-lasting "connections" in our lives.
Jan Yager, Ph.D., author of Friendshifts: The Power of Friendship and How It Shapes Our Lives (Hannacroix Creek Books, 1997), writes "Even if you are lucky enough to be raised in a very responsive and loving family, it is inevitable that you will someday leave home. But friends-old friends whom you have cultivated over the years, or newer ones whom you develop in your new communities-will always be available to you for affirmation and companionship."
The fact is we need friendship. But for many of us it seems so difficult. How do you meet someone if you don't know anyone? How do you go about getting a friend?
More important to ask is how can you be a friend.
In a study conducted among college students, Jan Yager asked participants to indicate what factors must be present in a close friendship: "Almost all agreed that trust and honesty were paramount, followed by faithfulness, loyalty, and being a good listener, and, finally, having ideas in common and love."
Not surprisingly, if you make an effort to show an interest in someone else's life, you will soon find that you not only are a friend but have a friend, too.
We can't remember the moment now, but sometime in kindergarten either Jocelyn or I had to make the first move. Step out and take a chance. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. We were not identical personalities. We weren't looking for perfection. But we cared about one another.
It can be something as simple as asking about how their week went. Or making the effort to say more than "Hello" to the people who sit next to you in class.Offer someone your help, offer to share something you have or simply offer your time. Perhaps you and a classmate could share study help in the library.
Buy them a cup of coffee and LISTEN. Take the time to let them tell their story-for most people, manners dictate that they reciprocate and ask "What about you?" You'll soon find that you are sharing more than a cup of java.
Friendship is about more than details. It is companionship. It is caring. It is love.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both of them are transformed.
~psychiatrist Carl Jung (quoted in The Heart of Friendship by Muriel James and Louis M. Savary)
Loneliness, at its core, is a feeling of disconnection - the feeling that "nobody loves me."
And we all want to be loved.
Continue: Greeks are known for mythology including Aphrodite, the goddess of love. What can we learn from Greek about love? >> 1. 2
Copyright 2000 Women Today Magazine. Used with permission.
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