FRIENDS AND FOES
Sean the architect
Director at X YR AVG JOE Group of companies | Creative Director at Podtec Modular (Pty) Ltd | Owner of Scheckters Raw OCQ (Pty) Ltd | Creative Director of The Upward Group | Life coach and author of Joe.blogs |
Joe. Blogs #113 – Sunday 19 January 2024
FRIENDS AND FOES
Howzit guys!
This week saw my kids going back to school.
I spoke some time back about struggling to make fiends here in the Cape and thought it was a suitable time to update everyone!
Leaving my community behind in JHB was a huge transition and one of the best ways to feel like you belong to a new community is to make friends. Making friends here in the Cape has been incredibly difficult for us.
I didn’t have a huge number of friends in JHB and most of the ones I thought I had turned out to be just acquaintances. By this I mean friends through association, whether it be working with them or playing sports with them. You spend a lot of time with work colleagues, and they become your ‘friends.’ Some of them transition into proper friends, the ones who remain friends no matter if you work with them or not. And that is what true friends are, they stick by you no matter what and make the effort to remain friends with you.
I read something a while back where it said that friendship should be an effort. If we want a proper friendship, then we all need to make the effort to reach out to your friends. Do not see it as an effort but ask yourself which friends would you make an effort for??
Its obviously a balancing act; we all need to put in the effort to maintain our various friendships, but it must not become one sided. Reaching out is one thing but if its continually not reciprocated then we need to learn to move on…
It is a difficult one, but this situation also reminds me of the saying “friends for a reason, season or a lifetime” and I guess we need to identify which of these categories each of our friends fall into.
Each category has its importance.
We cannot control which of our friends will be in which category and sometimes its best to just accept them for who and what they are.
Some friends you will just know, others might take more time.
Some will be good for us, but some will not.
But do not stress it…
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I am fortunate to have a friend who I have almost known for a lifetime, and I am grateful to have him in my life. Its not hard work to maintain the friendship and in fact it has been a long-distance relationship with him being in a different province for most of this time. When a friendship like this happens, there is no hard work involved, it becomes very natural and completely dependable. I do not even think about it too much and know we will always be close.
I also have work friends here in the Cape, people who I work with and share common interests. I also have padel friends who I share the padel court with and this has also helped me feel a bit more ingrained into the community.
Collectively my wife and I also have school parent friends thanks to our children’s friends at their respective schools.
Some of these friendships are harder than others and we still struggle to fit in completely. Joburgers always like to ‘kuier’ or visit each other, having braai’s and each other’s homes but here in the Cape the locals will often say “yes, lets get together” but then never follow up…
We even tried forcing the issue by just inviting ourselves, but this also did not really work.
It’s a tough one, but again I think its best to just let it be and not force anything.
The right friends will come along, whether it be for a reason, season, or a lifetime we do not know but I am happy to just take it one day at a time…
The best part is knowing that I am married to my best friend and as long as we are together, I know we will be ok.
We have shared this new journey together and know that we are there for each other. She is my reason, season and lifetime all rolled up into one!
I am a super lucky guy!!
I hope you all cherish your friends too out there too and appreciate the ones that just work and make the best of the ones that come along from time to time.
I will see you on the other side and hope that your journey this year is an amazing one!!
Later,????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Joe.blogs