Friendship

I have never been a good judge of character. This fact is reinforced in me each time I review the list of men I dated in my life. The list is not long but it is also not a who's who among the worlds greatest minds. I am very lucky for the good friends who I do have that can spot trouble a mile away. They are usually the ones who send up warning flares that this new person I am trying to befriend, is not the person I think they are. Some of my friends have even gone to extreme measures, like freezing me at a beach for hours, drilling into my head reasons why my new friend is not all that great. Iris Murdoch, a novelist, said, "There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship."

As I left work on Friday I thought of this saying and how much I missed those in my life who supply that kind of comfort. There are few people in life that we meet, that stay in your life. You meet people who are fun, for the moment. You meet those who help you realize a dream or a help you complete a task. You meet those who make you better than you were before you met them. You meet those who you think are great, only to realize that you have been mistaken. It is a rare moment when you find someone who "fits" with you. Yet this is the type of relationship that is taken for granted most often.

My main "problem" is that I believe that people's intentions are pure. I believe someone when they say that they want to get to know me. I believe the person who says that they like talking to me because I like current events, sports and politics. I don’t see the agenda they hold, when so many other people around me see it clearly. I invest myself and I open up, only to realize in the end that my friends around me were right all along.

Thanks to all of you for shouting loud enough so I could hear. Thanks to those who just said, "don’t do it."