\u201cYou seem a lot happier since we moved to Texas,\u201d my 12 year old son told me the other day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do?\u00a0 That\u2019s not surprising.\u00a0 I am a lot happier.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s your friends here,\u201d he said. \u201cThey make you smile.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s right.\u00a0 They do.\u00a0 When we moved, I made a conscious decision to find friends who were fun and knew how to laugh.<\/p>\n
My Oklahoma friends are all nice women, but too many of them were friends of mine for the sake of convenience.\u00a0 Our children played together.\u00a0 Their children took dance classes, learned Latin, played sports, did boy scouts, etc. with my children.\u00a0 We were on committees together.\u00a0 We worked together.\u00a0 We helped each other in our vocations. They were great working friendships, and that was the problem with them.\u00a0 They revolved around work.\u00a0 Eventually our lives were so enmeshed that neither side could walk away because to disentangle would be so disruptive to all of our lives.\u00a0 When you begin choosing words carefully and tiptoeing around each other in order to maintain the status quo, can you call that friendship?<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until I moved away from it all that I realized how exhausting it all had been.\u00a0 I decided that this<\/i> time I would do better.\u00a0 This time I\u2019m only keeping and seeking out useless friends.\u00a0 The reality I have learned is that if people have a use and a purpose, you\u2019re not really their friend.<\/p>\n
I have and maintain lots of acquaintances these days.\u00a0 There are the people I meet on committees and the parents of my children\u2019s friends.\u00a0 I like them all and we are friendly.\u00a0 We chat and hang out, laugh and enjoy each other\u2019s company.\u00a0 We trade favors and recipes but we are not truly close.<\/p>\n
Then there are the few I love, a few from there and a few from here.\u00a0 The ones with whom I share my authentic self.\u00a0 The ones who bring nothing more than joy, peace, and comfort to my life.\u00a0 The ones without a purpose.\u00a0 They are the ones I keep for fun, the ones who make me truly happy just because I know them.\u00a0 They are my wonderful, beloved and truly useless friends.<\/p>\n
I hope they find me useless, too.<\/p>\n