The cost of friendship

 

What is the cost of friendship?

Is it time? The time spent focusing on the other? Time spent getting to know another and learning what they are like? What interests the other and excites them and causes happiness and sorrow? Is it the pursuit? The pursuit towards their passions and desires apart from yours? Pursuit in the middle of your own busy-ness? Pursuit towards intimacy, around distractions and things that would normally consume your interest? Is it laying down of your will in the interest of being other-centered?

Ultimately is that what it is? Laying down of your will? Letting go? Deferring dreams so that another’s can come true?

What is the cost of friendship?

Does it depend on timing? Turning in the timetable for your life's agenda, your goals?

To what extent does a person grant permission to explore friendship in the first place?

Is it a conscious decision as much as the mystery than it is often made out to be? Is it serendipitous as much as thoughtfully setting the stage? Is it based on deliberate actions as much as feelings?

Is there always room for friendship?

Or can a person’s life become so centered on self that it chokes out any opportunity to discover the other? How does a person make room for friendship to grow? Why do some friendships become stagnant? Is it because the people involved give up hope? Can a relationship die simply due to mutually negligent homicide?

How do you court friendship?

Do you allow yourself to be washed clean of judgment and limited thinking? Do you pull up the weeds of old fears and selfish habits and let pure love cleanse the scar tissue of past hurts and disappointments?

How valuable is friendship to you?

Is it worth more than the rubies and diamonds of your time? Is it more precious than your bank account or your IRA or 403-b?

What does friendship mean to you?

Are friendships the mile-markers of your life, the cornerstones? Do you depend upon them to feed your soul and help guide you?

No one can answer these questions for you. But the answers will surely come from how other-centered you are and are becoming.

photo credit: www.prettydesigns.com