A couple of days ago me and my best friends had a girl's night out, celebrating a birthday. As the two of them chatted away I looked at them quietly, noticing how grown up we all are. We’re no longer teenagers sitting on a bed in one of our rooms, loudly talking about what we’re going to wear on our Friday night out and which boys we flirted with last week. We’re sophisticatedly dressed young ladies, sitting in a chic bar, drinking wine from proper wine glasses and chatting about adult stuff.
I don’t think we even see how much we’ve changed over the last ten years, mainly because we were changing and growing up together, confronting problems side by side, always having each other’s back. We aren't called trefoil for nothing.
Sometimes our friend's paths separate from our own and when we see them we immediately notice how much they have changed. A few weeks ago I met an old friend; in the five years since we've finished high school we saw each other only half a dozen times and it’s always nice catching up with her. Each time we meet I see how she’s changed her way of thinking, dressing, talking and so on. She has grown up and I like who she has become. I know I’ve changed too, perhaps much more than she did, and I truly hope that she also likes who I’ve become.
In recent years I've met a handful of people with whom I had developed a friendship; those relationships are somehow fragile in comparison to the longstanding ones. They are like a new-born baby, in need of more frequent attention. Just like we have to support a new-born's head because he is not yet able to hold it up by himself, we also need to take special care of our newly formed friendships. When we talk to someone new we usually carefully choose our words, we think twice before we say something simply because we want to make an impression.
Old friends don’t need to be impressed, they truly know us; sometimes they know us better than we would admit. And that’s the reason why those longstanding friendships are the most precious; those are the ones that are often neglected and taken for granted but should be given special attention because true friends are as rare as gold and worth much more.
As I watched my two Musketeers, drinking wine and smiling, I realised how lucky I am to have not only them, but many other friends, old and new.
