Good Morning Friends & Digital neighbors! I hope you all had a good week end. How about looking at friendship today, maybe for a few if I have too much for the morning babble & ramble. We don't need many friends in life, in fact it often happens that life only affords of a few lifelong loyal friends who can accept us warts and all. New friends come along to those willing to listen and connect, but as we get older than often seems more difficult. "I tried friendship, I got burned" is a hard experience to overcome. Almost as difficult is to have a friend of perpetual disappointment, sooner or later we get tired of disappointment and stop investing in the relationship.

In the Age of the Disposable, few things are more readily disposed of than relationships. In our fascination and addiction to the new, it is too tempting and easy to discard the familiar to make room for the new with improved features. While it might be great to upgrade your latest phone, to discard an old friend to be replaced with a new one can be a terrible misjudgment. Nothing wrong with new friends, I appreciate what they bring into my life, and so hope they may join the roll of old friends.

Old friends know the stories, they lived them with you. Old friends have seen the development of your person, the joys and sorrows, successes and failures that brought you to the current chapter. They are the polished gems among your friends. Losing them, letting them go prematurely because of an offense is often a terrible mistake in our current age. Our current culture in the US does not encourage nor does it desire reconciliation, division is the preferred reality. Reconciliation is requires too much effort, the results are not guaranteed and it could prove to be an effort made in vain in the end. So why bother? If is it a good, lifelong friend, it is worth the bother.

However, one of the real sorrows of adulthood are the crossroads that lead to a parting of ways. When we come to those crossroads, fundamental differences in habit & attitude should be the reason for the departure, not some emotional flash in the pan which is the way of current culture. Why does current culture encourage so many choices that lead to empty and barren lives? It seems like the last 6 years in the US has been a heighten period of fraying of relationships among family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. More on this later, I am sure.

New friends that come along later in life get to share all the stories of the past to a new audience, it is one of the real joys of cultivating and forming new friendships. Depending on where you are with time & health left on the clock, those new friends get to share new chapters of life. It is never too late to connect with another, and it may change your life. Again we don't need many actual friends, but to have zero is to never discover part of yourself than a potential friend may have brought to light and life. More on this tomorrow - babble & ramble already too long for my morning typos.

Off to Sam Walter Foss and one of my favorite poems of all time.

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In the peace of their self-content;
There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths
Where highways never ran;—
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by—
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner’s seat,
Or hurl the cynic’s ban;—
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I see from my house by the side of the road,
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife.
But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears—
Both parts of an infinite plan;—
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead
And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.
But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice,
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by—
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish— so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat
Or hurl the cynic’s ban?—
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

A winter house by the side of the road - Not sure who took it Happy Monday my friends!