Sunday, May 01, 2005
Food and Friends
I am not Orthodox and I am not celebrating Easter today, but I thought, since as far as I can tell it isn't anybody's New Year’s, that today was a very handy day to make some resolutions that I have been putting off for a while.
- Go on a diet
This is one of those resolutions that many men and women my age habitually put on their ‘to do’ lists. There are many reasons for this, the principal one being that we are, indeed, fat. I have been ballooning faster than the toads of Europe recently. I blame this on an egregious injury which has kept me from exercising, but the truth is I just like to eat.
(Actually, food addiction is a real-life disorder. I have NOT been diagnosed with that disorder. Those who have food addiction or suspect that might be food addicts can go to www.foodaddicts.org for further information).
In any event, I publicly (gulp) declare that this time I am serious and starting tomorrow, in this space, I will give a brief update on the progress of my diet, with a weekly update on my weight loss. Wish me luck.
- Be a Good Friend
This is not as easy as it sounds. Being a friend when you are 55 has different meanings than when you are 10. When you are 10 you could be a friend by lending your GI Joe for 10 minutes or walk arm and arm to the corner store. When you are 20 you can sit and talk for hours in the dormitory or by the railway near campus and tell stories and talk philosophy and make plans. When you’re thirty you pull away because you each have families to build and lives to lead and children to raise. When you are 40 your children are beginning to be adolescents and so you can sympathize with each other and you can get together once in a while and share stories of the teenage battles.
By the time you are 55 your lives have passed that place where potential and reality cross. At this age you can accept who you are or not - - it doesn’t really matter because the die is cast.
With the casting of that die must come confrontations with the inevitable: our finances weaken, our children leave us, our parents die, our marriages sometimes fail, our youthful dreams evaporate.
In the midst of these realities we look for beacons of stability and hope: the love of our children, the memories of their youth, the strength of our spouse, the heritage of our families, the spiritual support of our God, and our trusted network of friends that we love. (Notice the ‘l’ word. By this point in our lives, if we must not be afraid to love our friends as we love other important people in our lives)
One of the great gifts we have been given by God has been the ability to share what and who we are with one another. When my Dad died the consolation that my friends brought me helped make that experience bearable. So, that is one thing being a good friend means to me now – being there when it hurts – no matter what, without fail.
I have a friend my age who today, May 1st, is dancing in a public performance for the first time in her life. What a wonderful thing she is doing! She has friends all over the country (she lives in
Finally, it’s too late in our lives to allow petty differences to interfere with friendship. If we’ve got a beef with each other, we have to ''duke it out to a resolution. Most of the time, one of us has made a mistake and will admit it eventually. We have wasted so much time in our lives being mad at people we love. So, good friends resolve differences.
I have been blessed with only a few close friends as an adult, but they mean so much to me. To all of you, please know that I am resolving today to do a better job of:
1. Loving you
2. Being there in times of need
3. Reveling in your joyful experiences
4. Resolving differences with you when they are there.
So, by sometime next year I should be the skinniest best friend on the planet. Oh, and I can use all of my blogging friends’ support as well – some encouragement
and no cookies, please.
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