Friendly Failures?

Some may wish to reflect on a friendship gone bad; others may have ideas of how to heal cracking relationships; others may have other ideas about why it is that friendships are sometimes broken or why they fade into a distant memory. Epstein’s chapter led me to a reverie of former friends no longer in my life. You feel this at times?

Most of us had close friends in high school or college and, for any number of reasons, are simply no longer a part of our life. Perhaps a Christmas card, or an occasional e-mail, but what nurtured and sustained us at one time in our life — a true friendship — is no longer that kind of friendship.....

I had returned a world I left — and it evoked both pain of relationships now gone and joy for relationships once enjoyed. I could go on. Point made. Many of us know what is like to return to a former social world. These friendships were not broken; they simply faded. Seeing someone from that world opens that world back up to us …

Others, of course, crack … for a variety of reasons — time, pushiness with one another, personal changes, time needed for children or others, marriage or divorce, politics, inappropriate things said, pride, misunderstandings, etc..

We’re taught to be reconciled with one another at all times. That’s a great idea, to ape the words of CS Lewis, until you find yourself at serious odds with a friend.

[via Jesus Creed]