Keeping the important people close to you

A true friend is someone who is there for you when they would rather be anywhere else. ~ Len Wein

I’m someone who has a small circle of friends.  Sure, I know lots of people, I have friends on Facebook and people who I can spend time with, but honestly, although we use the term friend for these people, in fact, these people are acquaintances.  Why do I say this?  To me a friend is someone you can truly count on.  This means to me, those people I truly call friends are the ones I can call at 4AM and they’ll pick up the phone, the people who if I called and said I need you here, the conversation wouldn’t be about if, but about when.  I have very few people I put into this category.  So even pre-pandemic, I made an effort to keep these people in my life as much as possible.  I make an effort not just to stay in contact but to see these people face to face whenever possible.  This has been I think, the hardest part of the pandemic on all of us, not seeing the people that mean the most to us in person.

At work, early in the pandemic I reached out individually to all of the people I supervise to check-in on them.  For some who weren’t doing so well, it meant checking back from time to time to make sure they were ok.  I did the same with the people I care most about.  I’m not special, I think a lot of us did this, I also got calls and check-ins from people who care about me.  I know of friends who really did cool things, weekly notes to friends or staff, random chocolate deliveries.  Some people just reacted in ways they normally wouldn’t have in other times to maintain that contact.  A former student of mine, one I’m incredibly proud of, she works at JPL on the deep space communication network, she sent me a gift after I mentioned something to her about the item when she showed it on Instagram.

Recently I had a friend ask to verify my mailing address, I didn’t think much of it, I move a LOT, and even my friends often lose track of which address they have for me is the correct one.  But then this week I got a package, the lovely mug and tea pictured below with a card inviting me to tea.  What a really wonderful and spectacular idea, the card simply said that this person wanted to keep in contact with the people important to them.  And as such, they invited me to have tea over Zoom regularly and were kind enough to provide the tea for the first three.

So a simple post and a simple lesson tonight.  Keep the people that are important to you, close to you.  Life is short and complicated and it’s easy to lose track of these people, especially if like me, your people are not geographically close to you.  So call, write, send them some chocolate or invite them to tea over Zoom.  If you do this you’ll keep these people close and have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane