When we were little, our best friends were the ones that lived close enough for us to go play with.  As we moved into middle school and high school, friendships became based on common interests.  The football players were their own group of friends, the band kids were their own group of friends, and the vo-tech kids were their own group of friends.  If someone were to leave that common interest for another, chances are that their friendships would change as well.  This trend continues through college as students tend to gravitate towards others that share their major or live on the same floor in the dorm.  For the most part, these friendships tend to be surface level and are easily dissolved into someone you remember from the past.

The exception to the rule is a friendship from any of these periods of life that is deeper and lasts.  Friendships that involve doing life together have more meaning and do not break apart at the turn of a hat.  As we progress into the work force, we begin to have “work friends” that we are doing life with based on the fact that we spend eight hours a day with them.  Sometimes these relationships can be lasting friendships, but more often than not, they are still surface level friendships that are lost soon after one party moves on to a different career.

The relationships I have been mentioning seem to resemble fast food drive-throughs.  We show up in the relationship to get what we want or need out of it and then we’re gone.  If something goes wrong in the relationship, we avoid it.  I am great at drive-through friendships.  I have my men’s group that  I go to with struggles.  We talk and then I’m on my way, not even talking to any of them until the next time we meet.  I have my work friends that help me get things accomplished at work, but that tends to be where the relationship ends.  I even have a group of friends that I just play video games with at night.  We get online and play xBox for a couple hours and then there’s nothing more to the friendship until we’re back on the xBox the next day.

I think we all long for the deep, lasting friendship that I am talking about here.  I have that kind of friendship with my wife, but there’s something about having a strong friendship with a group of guys that’s different.  I know that my wife feels the same way as she sometimes longs for a group of girls that she can rely on as strong friends.  Although I have the desire to build strong friendships, I don’t know how.  I have a lot of friends, but it’s difficult to tell if any of them are those deep friendships.  I hope I haven’t offended you if you feel like you are one of those friends to me.  The fact is that I rarely find myself engaged in any of my friendships in the form of doing life together or even just hanging out.

Tonight I get to do just that.  The friends that I have been “hanging out” with on xBox are all getting together to just hang out and enjoy each others company face to face.  Most of these guys have been more like acquaintance type friends for a long time, but maybe they can start to become more than that.  A lot of times I or my friends have had good intentions to “get together some time and hang out,” but acting on those good intentions rarely happens.  Let face it, we’re all busy.  With that being said, I am excited to get to go hang out with some old friends and get to know new ones tonight.  I don’t expect to become best of friends just because we are hanging out tonight, but it feels great to feel like I am a part of this group of friends.