Yesterday, I got to thinking about how friendships are like the sun and how the best days combine them both. One warms you from the outside and the other from within.
It’s easy to celebrate them on gorgeous summer days, when the lake shimmers and glasses clink and laughter floats easily under clear starry skies. But, it’s nice to know they’re there for you on grayer days as well.
You can count on each – sunshine and friends – to be there for you, even if your busy lives draw you away from the window and you take for granted that they remain on the other side.
I’ve had days in my life when the rising sun and the happy colors it splashes across the sky seem like an affront to some terrible news I’m working to digest, or the business of friendship and the time it demands feels impossible to manage.
Even on those thankfully few days, though, the twin gifts of sunshine and real friendship remain, patient soldiers generously content.
I understand that the acknowledgement of either benefits the one who extends even more than the one who receives. The sunset flings wide its arms, bows its head and curtsies dramatically at the end of the day, whether I am there to applaud or not.
But the best days end when we connect, I salute the magnificence and store its memory for darker times.
So, too, with friendship.
Today and every day, I am grateful for both.
