Three weeks in Switzerland lay before me like an endless beach in the sky. Everything seemed possible. But then the phone rang, my calendar was filling up at an alarming rate. And then it got difficult.
– Too many friends? – I was indignant. “You can’t have too many friends. Only the wrong ones.”
Maybe it’s because I had a hard time making friends when I was in school. With belonging, fitting in. All my favorite books back then were about cliques and secret clubs. Something that I desired, but somehow was not within my reach. As a teenager, I watched popular girls as a biologist studied rare beetles. I tried to find a pattern in her behavior, the key to her popularity.
It wasn’t until I first moved to another city and was able to start over, so to speak, that I finally realized that being me was enough. This belonging is not necessarily related to adaptation and has absolutely nothing to do with adaptation. I was soon surrounded by a wildly diverse but reliable group of people who made me feel at home. The homogenous clique, the secret club of my children’s books, never existed. My friends can’t be mixed. But from time to time they gather around the table. And sometimes they scold me. Like yesterday. They thought not only that I had too many friends, but also that new ones could not appear. “At our age, this is no longer possible. We just don’t have any more options. Our lives are already full!
“The boat is full, isn’t it,” I muttered a little viciously. But in fact, I often have a guilty conscience. When the days just slip away from me like now when I have to cancel again as soon as I arrive. On the other hand, my days are also filled with life, laughter, worries, conversations, food, walks and glasses of wine, love. What could be more important?
In Victor’s culture, friendship means more than love and family: they are, so to speak, a given, according to the old Toltecs. Friendship, on the other hand, requires dedication and commitment.
The other day at our kitchen table in San Francisco, we discussed the absurdly high cost of living in this city. How much more can we afford to live there and what could be the alternative. A friend has already done some research and listed attractive small towns, numbers and reasonable timeframes.
She had a plan. I got a little scared, but then I remembered my summer vacation in Maine, where I spent a week sleeping on the sofas of friends, I thought about my guest tours in beautiful Switzerland, about all the invitations and offers that I did not have. didn’t even use it. I generally don’t like pensions, insurance, or any specific plans for the future, but I have friends. You are my greatest wealth, my most important asset.
Even if I sometimes disappoint them.