Do More Than Catch Up With Friends

Some of my friends lead very busy lives. So although we are good friends, we do not often get to talk. And because basically everyone I know lives a couple hundred miles away from me, I do not often get to hang out with them, either. But once or twice a month, I catch up with friends. And once or twice a year, I go out on an expedition to get some face-to-face time with them.

The first day with my friends is usually spent catching up. So much goes on in the time between visits that it takes hours to cover it all between each of us. But once we are all caught up, then there's the rest of the weekend. And that's where things get awesome.

Most of my friends are good at getting sidetracked, so part of the reason that it takes all day to catch up is that we keep going off into side conversations. But even after we have gotten through it all, there i so much more to say. Life is more than what we do. Life is about what we have thought, what we have considered, what we are planning.

I spend the rest of our time discussing philosophical quandaries, debating life views, telling dirty jokes, watching movies while dissecting them and getting further sidetracked. Whether we have something to do or nothing to do, we always have a good time. We can be stupid or we can be deeply profound.

There is a saying that with good friends, no matter how much time has passed, you always pick right back up where you left off. This is true, but it is not enough. If your time together amounts to catching up with everything that has happened, then the friendship is basically over. True, living friends, when they return to each other, make new stories. They make more inside jokes, create more memories. They add to the existing friendship.

Vacations always reinvigorate me. They motivate me to do things and they give me more ideas to explore. From my most recent one, I now am interested in friendships as living entities. Living friendships are healthy and grow, but once they stagnate long enough, they seem to be in a state of living death. And if nothing else, I want to play with the phrase "zombie friendship".