Good friends are hard to find ... and harder to keep

I just had a birthday recently. These are always reflective times. My first thought was it feels weird to turn an age that is a speed limit on some highways (55). My second thought was then about some of my friends.

I am at an age where you start to lose some of your old comrades for various reasons. Some die. Some move away. Some are so wrapped up in their careers or their families that they just don't have the time needed to cultivate a good friendship. You remain on good terms with those people but they eventually become more like acquaintances.

Good friends -- whether they be a family member or somebody else -- are really hard to find. These are the people you can tell right away when you are hurting and vice versa. They are the ones you call just to say hello. You have your disagreements with them but you always find a way to patch things up because you value their friendship more than any ideological point you might have wanted to make.

Finding relationships with that kind of depth takes time, a commodity a lot of us simply don't have.

There are a lot of people whose opinion I listen to and consider carefully. But I am surprised to discover there are really only a handful (maybe two handfuls) of people whose opinion on such and such subject really matters to me. Losing access to any of those people would be as painful as having your arm cut off.

I came across this discovery by accident. During by time working in pro baseball, I thought I had many friends who were involved in different aspects of the business. But I discovered that after I left the game (not on my terms), these folks disappeared as quick as possible. They couldn't afford to be in contact with me because it might affect their job status. Although I didn't think so at the time, those people did me a big favor. After thinking about it some more, I realized I don't miss most of those people at all.

It gave me more time to cultivate and learn more about the people who really mattered in my life -- a birthday gift to myself that has no price.