When I Grow Up . . .

Good Friends . . . help each other cope

Heather Holleman writes in her blog about hearing a little child say what she wants to be when she grows up. (She Wants To Be a Great Friend)

Wow . . . I am as impressed as Ms. Holleman – what an ambition!  Hooray for the influences in this child’s life that sparked such a thoughtful aspiration.

Being a great friend isn’t being a people pleaser. People pleasers aren’t always residents of the real world – been there, done that – and did little good for anybody by pretending, ignoring, or placating, especially myself.

I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. ~Plutarch

God has put people in my life whose friendships have led me out of crazy dark places and kept me from wandering over stupid cliffs.  They have loved me despite myself, and believed better about me than I did of myself. 

Friendship is Love with jewels on, but without either flowers or veil. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

And they have told me the truth.

Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty. ~Sicilian Proverb

     

Other people’s courage, compassion, commonsense and forbearance have been more important to me than any day dreams I had about what I wanted to be when I grew up – and it’s a comforting challenge to know I am not too old to still want to be a great friend as I grow up!

• "He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him." (The change in Scrooge -- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol)

from Pinterest