I was lucky to spend time with quite a few of my friends this past week. It was a lunch here, a phone call there, a filled table at a bar, a laughter shared.
Just like many others, I feel friendship is what makes a difference in life. What is special about me is maybe I have so many friends. I am not saying it to brag, it’s just who I am. Maybe it is even a sort of problem as this leads to often feeling like time is just not enough to regularly see all the people I want to keep close. I think it is one of the reasons I love social media so much, it allows me to keep up with my big pool of friends.
And make new ones, of course! I have a very low threshold from bumping into someone to “take them as my friend” as we say here in Ghana. I have meaningful encounters with others in queues, on Twitter, at events – I even feel cheated if someone choose to sleep next to me on a plane!
I am passionate about my friends. I pride myself they are all very different (although many of them seem to be “storytellers” or talkatives, I have noticed, although talkative myself, with them I am the awed audience!), well in outer descriptives: age, sex, background, class and so forth. They give me useful perspectives, they make me smile, they give me energy and I love to think about them and plan the next time we meet.
I realise, it is not often I tell my friends how much they mean to me, but this weekend, my friend Kofi found an excellent way of describing it:
“If you surround yourself with the right people, then life is Gold. Gold!”
I dedicate this post to my friend Anna who has made my life gold many times.