Friendship

The future is made up of realities and choices, and at any given time there are many pathways to it. The choices include the people around you, the actions that you take with them and the actions they take with you - as well as the interactions of the whole mess of that with the realities of the environment as seen by everyone involved... even those not in the 'network'.

Last week I lost a friend who I had known only for a year. He didn't use Twitter or Facebook; he started off herding cows and built a multi-million dollar automotive-related business from there based on risk-taking, sound decisions and most of all - hard work. You could eat on his reputation. In fact, many did due to his generosity. So after losing him last week, knowing that the world was a lesser place without him and also knowing that pathways had closed I considered it all very deeply.

When I posted on it on Facebook, I got messages of support. But no one knew this person, and it almost seems like sacrilege to write about him on these sites because he was more real than the majority of people who follow my doings here, there, or anywhere. When all my other real friends became distant - perhaps because I began to get dirt under my fingernails (how distasteful!) and being as hands on as I usually am while damning the pseudo-aristocracy, this friend was someone who wanted nothing from me. I wanted nothing from him. For both of us in that environment - in this environment - that is a luxury. In a world where people beat on our doors because we're sympathetic and casually empathetic, we allowed ourselves the abuses and pointed out that our weaknesses and strengths were synonymous. While we gave, we never took for nothing and we never leeched others to get what we have or what we wanted... or even what we needed.