An open letter to a friend

People have asked me about you in the last fortnight, mentioning that your name doesn’t crop up in conversation as it used to. But it’s hard to explain what has happened.

When we met a while back, after something of a gap, it was a meeting born not of business but of friendship. I wanted to find out how you were. This was not so surprising, I guess, as we enjoy many shared experiences, values and hopes.  The difference in age – which might have been significant when we were younger – is negligible now.  Unexpectedly (for me at least), from that reunion arose an opportunity for us to collaborate in a dream that mattered to us both and I am grateful for this.

Well, we stole some horses, as they say.  We hustled a little.  Perhaps we changed a few minds, where minds were open to the possibility of change, though (Goodness knows!) few are. From time to time we got to ask why the emperor was so scantily-clad. We dared to speak a little truth to minor ‘Power.’

It was fun!  And if our stumbling efforts may have occasionally served a higher purpose, the fun was no less important. But what has become of the friendship which was our first aim?  And how quickly we drop off someone’s priority list for returned calls.

There are too few good friends in the world. As I have blogged before friendship, once affirmed, is too precious to allow simply to wither through neglect.