Self Improvement...

Friendship may be the most precious human gift any of us possesses. It presses us to remain open to another person or persons. It provides us with an automatic support group. Friendship offers a forum where we can safely sound off. In short, next to the potential security of close family members, friendships give us satisfying companionship across the years.

We all need people besides our spouse with whom we can share the day-to-day hassles and questions. Reaching out to meet new people - and venturing into new settings where we may find persons with some interests like our own - is an important way to stay healthy.

Why don't we have lots and lots of good friends then? Most of us have two or three good friends and some of us have only one. Well, there are barriers that slow us up in reaching out to find and build new friendships. These include health, income, transportation and hesitation to go out alone at night. These limitations apply to all as we grow older, but especially to women.

Scholars studying later life friendships have also discovered that there are patterns of friendship. Three different styles of friendship are common.

• The independents who are self-sufficient people who have many acquaintances but no really close friends; they tend to hold all friendships at arm's length, which makes it easier to change friends if one relocates.

• The discerning person develops very close relationships with just one or two people, often on a long-term basis and is deeply committed to these relationships.

• The acquisitive person moves through life acquiring friends in most new experiences and retaining the best of previous friends as well. Do you recall the old camp song "Make new friends and keep the old; one is silver and the other gold?"

We build up the number and quality of friendships like a bank account, but we need to manage a delicate balance in handling our own lives and this special relationship. Further, the easily available pool for new friends diminishes as we get older unless we reach out to build friendships with younger persons. This can happen as we develop friends of different ages around common interests - music or politics or the church.

But, friendships do require reaching out; they don't just happen. How can such friendships be built?

If we are wise, we may have begun such friendships over the years, perhaps as an older friend or mentor of the young. However, it is never too late to reach out to new persons.

Finally, some basic suggestions that will help you in making new friends and retaining your good friends:

• Get involved in activities that bring you into contact with new people, even if that seems at times a bit uncomfortable

• Keep in touch with friends; plan to get together from time to time

• Reactivate neglected friendships and neglected family kin

• Make friends with new generations of family members, especially adult children and siblings

• Reach out to people either older or younger to foster several new opportunities for building friendships.

If your friendship hasn't been through a test, then you have no idea what kind of friend you have. When that relationship is tested and, if you are lucky, your friendship survives, you must learn to take it and hold it as a precious gem. To keep a friendship intact takes work and effort. Effort can include spending time with your friend, going out to dinner, working out and just being together. No one person can keep a friendship going. It takes two people to put in the commitment to make it what it can be. If the friendship falls on one person, then that can be the end of the relationship. People in your life come and go, but true friends are friends you hold on to forever. Learn to not take your friends for granted because it is truly painful when you lose one whom you thought you had until the end. If your friendship is true to you, don't let anyone or any group of new people come in and steal the importance of the friendship. You have to take your friend and go back to the place that made you become the friend in the first place: vowing to never let anyone come between you. That is the true test of the friendship itself.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the English poet, critic and lexicographer, wrote, "If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair". In the context of "keeping a friendship in constant repair", I believe that making "new acquaintance" means renewing acquaintance with one's friends. Change is a constant in everyone's life. People are constantly evolving, and thus they must re-connect with those they care about. The connection must be maintained. John Henry Newman stated it in these words, "To live is to grow. To grow is to change. To grow fully is to change often."