On Friendship and Time

Yesterday I had lunch at a sandwich shop I haven't been to in a really long time.  It isn't a particular favorite, I only went because a client gave me a gift certificate, but it does have a great memory associated with it.  One of my closest friends and I had lunch there on her wedding day.  I was the maid-of-honor in her wedding and we were headed to the church to get ready.  She stayed with me the night before, so as to preserve the tradition of the bride and groom spending the night before the wedding apart, and we were hungry so we had lunch before heading to the church.

It is probably my favorite memory with this particular friend.  The lunch was nothing special but it was this nice, quiet moment on a huge day in her life.  It was kind of a book-end to our single girl days together and the beginning of her new life with her husband.  Taking 30 minutes to have lunch with a friend on a day when time is a particular commodity and there are, quite literally, a hundred people demanding it, is a very thoughtful thing to do in my opinion.

One thing that I believe to be true is that there is nothing more valuable you can give a person than your time.  Quite often people give words in the place of time: I miss you, I'm sorry I haven't been around lately, You are so (insert positive adjective here), I love you, etc.  Words are nice and hardly indispensable but they mean very little when not paired with giving of your time.  

Ironically the friend from the aforementioned wedding day story had a baby this past year and has been very limited with her time since.  However, I can give her a break, in part, because she had a baby but also because of moments and memories like the one described above.  I know her to be a thoughtful person and while she may have become understandably distracted of late, that thoughtfulness is still there.

I'm hardly the perfect friend but I've spent a lot of time being one in my life.  More time than a lot of people who are focused almost solely on lovers and/or spouses.  Truth be told if you can't make time for a friend then you neither have one or are one.  Lots of things can be expressed by words but friendship is not one of them.  If friendship depended on the terminology then we wouldn't differentiate between the individuals we share our time and our lives with and the people we stalk on Facebook.