Friends - how we keep them, how we value them

I had some friends around for dinner last night. Can you believe that three of them were named Kim? Two boy Kims and one girl Kim. I met all of these people, except one, when I was about 17 or 18. At 50 something, that means we have been friends for almost 40 years!
Amazing!

As we were having a good time last night I began wondering what it is that that made us stay friends for all these years. Of course, we had wandered in and out of each others' lives, but always maintained a sense of what the others were doing.

At the end of the Kakeroma, Japan, 16km swim



I wonder if it is because you have similar interests, or maybe just enjoy doing things together. In the photo above we had just finished a 16km swim. I did it as a duo with the lady on the left. She lives in Japan and I live in Western Australia and even though we only see each other every couple of years, if we're lucky, I just know that we will always be friends. I think it's not only that we share interests, but also because we just clicked straight away and enjoy each others' company.

I don't think 'just clicking' with my friends from the dinner party is why we are still friends, but maybe we did a lot of things as a group in our teens and twenties and then as people had kids, we still maintained our friendship by phone calls, coffee and going out together. I don't know, but it's very satisfying to have such long term friends.

That just reminded me of a book that I have just finished reading called "When God Was a Rabbit". It was about a girl, her brother and their friend and all the people in their lives as they were growing up. It examined what different kinds of friendship could be like. I couldn't put it down.