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Dr. Darrell White's Personal Blog

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Old Friends: Sunday Musings 5/5/19

1) Hip. 3 1/2 weeks out from surgery I forgot my cane this weekend and made it through unscathed. Mistake or milestone?

2) Dayton. In town for a wedding (see below). We spent almost all of our time in and around the campus of the University of Dayton. I’ve always loved college campuses, and Dayton was another campus to love. 4+ years there must be a very nice way to grow up.

3) “You can’t make old friends.”

Beth and I are cruising home following the wedding of a young man we’ve known essentially since birth. Billy is the middle child of our oldest, closest local friends, a couple we met in graduate school in 1982. Over drinks at the Rehearsal Dinner on Friday the topic of friendship came up (out of town guests had been invited to attend). Beth recalled the song lyric above, pretty much stopping conversation in its track when she did. Assembled at that particular table were the parents of the groom, two couples they’d met when they moved to Cleveland in 1991, and us. That’s a lot of years of friendship for that couple.

It takes much more than time to make an old friend, though time is certainly a major part of the recipe. Friends share not just time but also time together. Real friends share experiences, and more than that they openly share how those experiences made them feel. There is a trust in friendship, and you can’t have an old friend unless that trust has been tested over time and repeatedly made the grade. An old friend is one you turn to when times are both good and not so good; they are equally able to share both your sorrows and your joys, and they will forgive you for both. You don’t need to be anyone other than yourself, your truest self when you are in the company of old friends. No masks, no posturing, no playing position. Friendship of this kind is the ultimate nonzero-sum game.

That Beth and I have old friends is among our greatest accomplishments. You can’t make old friends, you have to earn them.

I’ll see you next week…

3 Responses to “Old Friends: Sunday Musings 5/5/19”

  1. May 6th, 2019 at 12:45 am

    Mikki says:

    Also you have to get old to have old friends… so there is that

  2. May 6th, 2019 at 1:10 pm

    drwhite says:

    Ha! Indeed, one must be at least older to have “old friends”.

  3. May 6th, 2019 at 4:06 pm

    Rosco says:

    Love being an “old friend” with the White family

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