Have you ever noticed there are some friends who fill you up and some who leave you drained? With some friends, no matter what you do together, you are left with a certain contentment. With others, you leave feeling the opposite.
I bike ride with Annette for two hard hours once or twice a month. We often ride side by side on back roads, pushing through twenty miles of hills while circling the beautiful Briones Park in the East Bay. We pass vineyards, horses, cows, goats and a pair of ewes.
Annette is an exuberant storyteller. She tells me about the challenges in her life. Whether or not they are mundane, they are always interesting because she shares with expression and her honest emotions. More importantly, Annette is a great listener. When I tell her what’s going on in my life, she listens attentively, saying, “Oh no!” at all the right times. Inevitably, I share something of a spiritual nature and if she doesn’t adhere to my beliefs, she listens like a good friend and affirms me. There is freedom of all sorts when we bike. Freedom from moving fast and leaving our worries behind and freedom to express ourselves without fear of judgment. When the ride is over, my legs are wobbly and my neck hurts, but my soul is happy.
Conversely, there are friends I leave with feelings of emptiness. Maybe they are judgmental or just plain shallow. Maybe they are too self-absorbed to have a give-and-take conversation. Or maybe it’s me! Maybe my insecurities and shyness are keeping me from building a real relationship with the person.
In our efforts to find friends who fill us up rather than deplete us, we have to look at ourselves first. One of the best how-to books of all time is Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. This book should be required reading in high school—better yet, in sixth grade. The concepts are simple but often missed. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s not too late. If you haven’t read it in ages, you may want to check it out it again. When my husband and I were just about to give up on each other and go our separate ways, I thought of this book. To be honest, I told my husband that he better read the book and learn a few people skills or I was packing. We had been married eighteen years and I still didn’t think of him as a friend because there was so much negativity and antagonism being thrown around. My husband responded by buying two copies, insisting that I read it too.
