Who should you be friends with?

So I have this friend. 

To say she and I are different would be an understatement. As I sit here and write I am trying to find one thing that we agree on. Politics? Heavens no! We have opposite views on just about everything political! From policies to candidates we are totally at odds! You can be assured if she supports something I am opposed and vice versa. Election years are filled with banter, debates and all out political wars!

Now politics is not the only place we separate on the road of life! She is a HUGE animal lover! She has many pets and treats them with all the love and respect she can muster! I rate animal based on their gravy factor! What’s the Gravy factor you ask? Simple,  which ones taste better with gravy! I believe most animal are made for food not pets! Boy have we had some debates over that issue. She has a small farm just to raise and love the animals. I think it’s a waste of good meat not to eat them!

She has a generous heart and believes in helping everyone who needs it. I believe folks should be able to take care of themselves and make their own way! 

She lives an alternative lifestyle to mine, one that I don’t understand and one that I am sometimes at odds with!

You see we agree on very little!......well  except music ! She has great taste in music!! (By the way did you give me back my Pink Floyd cd I lent you in 2012? )

So really we have almost NOTHING in common, Politics, lifestyle, belief structure, and value systems are at times all at odds with each other!  So how can we be friends?  For all intensive purposes the world would tell us we shouldn’t be! We should be enemies divided by ideological differences! Enemies pitted against each other at every step of the way!  Opposites sides of the ballot box, opposite sides of the protest lines, opposite sides of just about everything!   Yet friends we are! I have very few real friends in the world but she is one of them.  So how?  It’s actually really easy and extremely hard!

I think early on in our relationship we both unconsciously (for me anyway) made a decision that we liked each other.  I won’t speak for her but I know I grew to like the PERSON she was. Not her beliefs, not her political views, not her choice of life styles or her religious views. I really liked HER. The person she was. I made a choice not to let the differences stand in the way of a friendship! I had to learn quickly (not easy for me) to agree to disagree and REALLY MEAN IT!  I learned not to judge her or try to change her way of thinking no matter how far removed from my own it was. I mean come on ducks are for eating!!!! ( sorry )  I learned to respect her point of view even if I didn’t share it!

You see there are all the reasons in the world for us NOT to be friends but only one reason TO BE. We chose to be! 

We chose to value the PERSON in each other not the rest of those defining factors that too often divide us as a society ! 

So who should you be friends with? If all of your friends share your same beliefs, values and opinions.  If they all look like, act like and think like you do . 

All I can say is boy are you missing out! 

Being nice is a choice, being friends is a choice.  What will you chose?

But I still think ducks are for eating ! 

Miss you DH

Happy 31

31 years ago today I married the most beautiful girl in the world! At that time I thought I loved her more than anything! Little did I know what real love was all about!  I had no idea what it truly meant to love someone! To care for someone so deeply you can’t even imagine life without them. A love so strong nothing else can stand between you.  I THOUGHT I knew what love was all about but boy did I have a lot to learn !

At that time I couldn’t imagine the joy that was to come! Nor the pain and struggles we would go through in our life together. As the years passed we have had more than our fair share of both! 

  I often hear people say that a marriage is a 50/50 proposition, with each side giving 50 percent to make a marriage work.  After 31 years of marriage I have to disagree with that. I think it take 100% from each partner. As I look back over the years there were times when Lisa truly held our marriage together. She sacrificed much to keep the wheels on our family !  At times  she was giving 100% to keep our family going! There were also  times when I did. I don’t think that’s wrong I just think it’s how it works.  In the life of every relationship there will be times when one partner will be carrying more of the relationship load. May not be fair, may not be what the self-help gurus preach but from my experience it’s what seems to happen.  

The hope is by the time you both come to the end of life and the relationship slips away into the  memories of the loved ones left behind , the hope is that folks look at your relationship and say  “ boy they really loved and supported each other over the years!“

Lisa you have carried way to much weight over the last 31 years and I love you more than I can ever say! Sit back and take it easy I got the next 31! 

I Love you Lisa Crooker Smith!