DO you have good friends? Do you make friends easily or is it hard work? I’ve collected 35 tips for you on how to create lasting friendships.
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Some of the tips are about finding friends, others are about how to deepen a friendship once it’s formed. Finally there are some points on how to repair a friend.
A friend recently said to me: "What if I were to get convicted of a crime -- even if I’m innocent -- and get put in jail for 10 years. Who would be at the gates when I'm released?" Could you rely on some of your friends to be there if that happened to you? |
What's your definition of a friend? Zen Master John Tarrant says the following in this book, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life: It's common to feel lonely, to think of yourself as something small and solitary in the vastness of things. It’s easy then to think of a friend as a home territory carved out of that vastness, a kind of living diary for sharing and storing the feelings of the day so that life can go on more or less as usual. Yet there are other kinds of friendships that don’t just assuage loneliness but undermine it by changing your understanding of who you are.
Good friends help us to understand who we really are. To create and enjoy lasting friendships takes effort and skill. Some people make friends easily, but for many of us making and keeping friends isn’t always easy.
| Please let us know your comments. Can you think of some other ways to make lasting friendships? |
Here is a list of 35 ways of creating and cultivating lasting friendships.
Photograph: *scarleth white
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