Maybe you both like hockey, or belong to Greenpeace, or shop at the same kind of boutiques. This can be anything from a common interest in ballroom dancing to a shared love of Wordsworth. There are five steps to the process, all of which are equally important:Ī friendship needs to be firmly grounded in common interest. Building and maintaining friendships is like building and maintaining a beautiful home. It was then that I realised I had learnt something worth sharing. However, last Saturday, I found myself having lunch with half a dozen new friends, chatting and laughing as if we had known each other for years. It can even feel a little scary if we don't know where to start. Yet, when we finally come to admit this to ourselves, we are surprised to discover that making and keeping friends is not as easy as we thought. Friendships enrich our lives in a way that family and business relationships cannot. In this phase of life, it is necessary to pause and take stock of what is really important to us. We tend to find ourselves in more focused settings, such as businesses, committees and child-centred programmes, which rob us of time and make us feel guilty about "indulging ourselves in frivolous activities". There is no longer the forced interaction of peer groups, such as we find in the classroom or on the sports field. The value of friendship gets more evident as we grow older.
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