FIVE FINGER FRIENDSHIP

A cousin once told me that people she could count her closest truest friend on one hand.  At the time, I must have been about 14, I thought she was mad and must be rather lonely with only four or five friends. I had plenty and couldn’t even imagine whittling them down to five.

As I got older and progressed through school and then to uni, I indeed found that I had an ever changing and evolving group of friends, with many promises to stay friends forever being broken and made again with people anew. I guess a lot of people cement their friendships at different times, and I thought I had found my dearest whilst trying to pass my degree at Portsmouth University. I was finally with people who I felt understood the real me. I had their back and they had mine. That was until I came back to London and my friends followed their own paths indifferent directions. Sure we tried to stay in touch and made a real effort to remain close. But once the easy access of living down the road from one another, and spending all our free time in our favourite hangouts together came to an end, our friendships soon became too much hard work and we stopped calling each other.

 

A few work colleagues and industry friends have made the transition to good friends, and a couple are now very dear to me, despite one of them moving twice in the last year and our friendship blossoming over Skype. But on the whole, work is work and play is play in job where personality is a business asset used daily. Sometimes in such lines of work, it is difficult to differentiate between real friendship and business affinity.

I don’t claim that this is the case for everyone, but I guess this is how I have come to understand what my cousin said to me then. I am so fortunate to have some amazing people in my life. I have great friends and a number of amazing personalities that I come across every day at work and popping up from my past. But I suppose that as I have grown and understood who I am, and have built up a sense of self and strength of character, the people who are dearest have become more apparent.  It’s the friend who still remembers the jokes from when we were five. It is the friend who can tell when I am in a mood and knows how to get my mind off it. In the company of my dearest friend I can bear their annoying mate and even treat him like a loved one. My closest mate is one I can’t go more than ten days without seeing. And those friends I will always have time for, as I presume they would for me.

I may be a social butterfly and have a lot of people I consider friends, and some I wish I didn’t have to. But my cousin is right, the few nearest friends keep me sane, safe and happy, and they are all I need.