Today's Thought - January

[bluidkiti]

January 31

Real friends are those who, when you’ve made a fool of yourself, don’t feel that you’ve done a permanent job.

~Erwin T. Randall

Friendship is one of the most important elements in a rich and joyful life. Good mental health requires that we not walk through life without one or two good friends. Many of us have been very lonely. We built invisible shields around ourselves that protected us from letting others know what we were thinking or doing, but they also separated us from the comfortable closeness of good friends. Many of us have a deep and abiding anxiety about being vulnerable to anyone, and many of us are especially guarded about getting close to other men.

In our growth as men, we are abandoning notions of perfection in ourselves and in others. We don’t expect perfection, and we can expect our friends to cut us some slack when they see our mistakes and our weaknesses. True friends see in each other a complex weaving of many qualities, many experiences, and a mixture of more and less attractive qualities.

Today, I will give my friendships the primary place they deserve.

Today's reading is from the book Stepping Stones: More Daily Meditations for Men*