Skip to main content

Friendships...gold and silver...real and virtual...priceless!



My 21st birthday dinner...Oh so formal then!
I was talking with a friend the other day about friendship.  About how it impacts on our lives, from childhood and teenage friends, to becoming friends with boyfriends’s friends, husband’s friends and their wives, parents of other school children, social club friends,  friends after divorce or death of a partner, passing friendships, acquaintances…and now virtual friends.

It’s complicated. And I am finding in my “middle” years that my need for friends has reduced…not that I don’t value and cherish my friends, but my actual need has lessened.  Why, I wonder?  I used always be a “People who need People” (with apologies to whoever wrote the song made famous in Funny Girl) sort of a person.  I was always out and about, making sure that I saw my friends, knew all that was going on with them and theirs. 


Afternoon tea for the girls...with bubbles!

However, as the years have moved on, my children have become independent and my own life has changed, I feel more settled with solitude when it happens.      

I have had some wonderful friendships throughout my life.  While I don’t see her often, I am still in contact with friend whom I met on our first day of school in 1961. 

May 1961, Loreto Kirribilli

 My other “oldest” friends are very much in my life.  My dear friend whom I met when we were 12 and at boarding school.  My terrific friend whom I met at 14 when I moved school at that ghastly teenage period when a “friend in need is a friend indeed”.  My great friend whom I met when I started work in Malcolm Fraser’s office; my dear friend with whom I have a friendship which went beyond friends to working partners and back again;  a woman whom I met through my sister, and best friend.  And a woman whom I met through my ex-husband and remains a great and loyal friend; and more...and perhaps most especially, my daughter.  And they are just the women.  I also have some great male friends,  mostly husbands of my girlfriends who I know would support me in an hour of need, as I would them.

We are all great girls!
And over the years there have been friends who have dropped by the wayside for various reasons, sensible or not.  But they remain in my memory fondly, and I guess that’s what friendship is all about.

I don’t yet have any “close” virtual friends.  I have a few blogs which I follow and look forward  to reading daily. I know people who have virtual friends, and I am sure they will meet one day as they have much in common through their blogs.

But when one moves, for whatever reason these days, is it easier to make friends “online” to avoid the awkwardness of meeting at a social club or elsewhere, if mutual friends are not at hand to make introductions?  Is it not easier to type emotions and thoughts to someone who seems to be on the same wavelength?  But what does this say about our sense of community?

More great dames!
The virtual world is reestablishing the ground rules of friendship. Social Media, “friends” and “defriending” are all concepts which were unknown 10 years ago, and are now very much the normality. 

Online dating sites have their own etiquette for meeting “friends”…yes, it’s a different world.  A better world?  Time will tell.  But for me, nothing is more valid in friendship than eye contact, voice contact and genuine caring and sharing.  Old fashioned?  Yes, but that’s OK too.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Boyfriend, Manfriend, Partner, Companion…a new word required….

Dance "partners" (microsoft) I read a really interesting article the other day written by a Generation Y male lamenting that his girlfriend no longer referred to him as her “boyfriend”, but in an overheard conversation as her “partner”.  He took exception to this expression writing: “I must have missed the memo on my sexless new categorisation – I would certainly not have approved it.  A ‘partner’ is someone you twirl around at a barn dance”. (Andy Jones, Grazia magazine) I have had a business partner;  there are partners in law, stockbroking and accounting firms. And so to refer to my personal life-sharer as a partner was not comfortable for me. But despite the fact that the English language is alive and evolving, there is not a word or an expression to reflect the status of one’s “life companion” whether in a gay or straight relationship if not committed to, or already married. The word “companion” actually applies in both French and Italian. Although in Engl

Bali…Bogans, Tattoos and the Ugly Australian…

Balinese temple (photo LP 2010) I have returned in the past few days from a holiday in Bali, Indonesia, with my sister.  Unlike my trip in 2010 when I stayed more remotely in the north west at Pemuteran  and  the north east at Amed, this visit was to a five star resort in Legian. What a difference!  The streets of Legian were very busy, the locals almost outnumbered by the Australian tourists.  I heard very few languages other than “Aussie” spoken and it reminded me that when I travelled with my French boyfriend to the northern part of Bali, I was told by the Europeans I met that they tended to avoid the tourist hubs of Kuta, Legian and Seminyak because of the loud, rude and crude Australians…yes a generalisation about the Aussies, but unfortunately, as I was to learn, a correct one. A friendly local trying to sell us a toy (photo LP 2012) It is difficult to write this post without appearing a “snob”.  But having canvassed my ideas with friends, acquaintances, col