Saturday morning was one of those mornings that almost forces you to slow down.
The sky was a brilliant blue with just enough scattered clouds to remind you they were there. It was about seventy degrees, sunglasses weather, with the kind of sunshine that makes every shade of green seem just a little greener. As I drove toward the golf course, I passed an alfalfa field where a handful of deer were helping themselves to the farmer's crop. They looked perfectly content, almost as if they knew they had nowhere else to be.
Honestly, neither did I.
That felt unusual.
This past weekend I had the chance to play eighteen holes with a couple of friends. Not a charity tournament. Not a business outing. Not a client event. Just golf for the sake of golf.
It struck me afterward that I couldn't remember the last time I'd done that.
When we finished, we stopped by the pool to see our wives, had lunch together, laughed about a few shots we'd like to have back, and headed home. It wasn'tsome extraordinary day.
Yet somehow it was.
What stayed with me wasn'tthe golf. It was the friendships.
One of the guys I've known for close to twenty years. We met through mutual friends at our golf club, and over the years our families have become intertwined. We talk regularly, get together throughout the year, and know what's happening in each other's lives.
The other friendship is barely a year old.
I've only met his family once. We've spent a little time together outside the golf course, but every conversation seems to pick up naturally where the last one left off. He's simply one of those people you're glad you met.
Driving home, I started thinking less about these two friends and more about friendships themselves.
It's funny how they happen.
When you're young, you assume the people around you will always be there.
In high school, those friends become your entire world. You don't think about thirty years from now because thirty years sounds impossible.
To be fair, I haven't done the best job staying in touch with many of the people I grew up with. Every now and then someone mentions an impromptu class reunion on social media, and I realize I haven't spoken to some of those people in decades.
That realization carries a little sadness.
Not because anything went wrong.
Just because life kept moving.
After high schoolcame college. I spent a year at St. Bonaventure before transferring to Gordon. Amy and I still keep in touch with a handful of people from those years, mostly because our children grew up around the same time. But even those friendships evolved.
Then we moved back to Cazenovia.
Again, life changed.
The friendships changed.
Over the last twenty-five years I've met people through work, through golf, through clients who became friends, through neighbors, through organizations, and through travel. Today I have people I could call in Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Florida, England, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Mozambique.
Some I've known for decades.
Some I've known for months.
Yet if I called them today, we'd pick up right where we left off.
That amazes me.
Friendships don't all follow the same path.
Some burn brightly for a season.
Others quietly deepen over decades.
Some require seeing each other every week.
Others somehow survive seeing each other only once a year.
There are friends you text almost daily.
There are friends you don't speak to for months, but the moment you reconnect, it feels as though no time has passed at all.
Every one of those relationships has value.
If you've read this far, you'reprobably wondering where I'm going with all of this.
Honestly, I think that's the point.
Life keeps introducing us to new people.
Some stay.
Some don't.
Sometimes we drift apart without anyone doing anything wrong. Careers change. Kids grow up. Families move. Interests evolve. Geography gets in the way.
That's not failure.
That's life.
I've stopped measuring friendships by how long they've lasted and started appreciating them for what they brought to my life while they were there.
The older I get, the more excited I become about the people I haven't met yet.
That's something I never expected to say.
I still have my opinions about the world. We all do.
But every new friendship teaches me something I didn't know before. It introduces me to different experiences, different perspectives, and different ways of thinking.
I genuinely believe those relationships make me a better husband, a better father, a better business owner, and ultimately a better person.
Somewhere along the way I also realized something else.
When I was younger, I wanted to have friends.
Now I want to become a better friend.
There's a difference.
I want people to know that if they call, I'll answer.
If they need help, I'll come.
If they find themselves stranded at midnight, I hope they never hesitate to pick up the phone.
Not because I expect anything in return.
Just because that's the kind of friend I hope to be.
I've discovered that the strongest friendships aren't transactional. They aren't built on keeping score. They're built on generosity, loyalty, showing up, listening, encouraging, laughing, and sometimes simply being present.
Maybe that's why they feel so meaningful.
The older I get, the more convinced I become that our greatest wealth isn't measured by what sits in our investment accounts.
It's measured by who would answer the phone when we call.
And whose phone we would answer without hesitation.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have people like that in my life.
Some I'veknown for forty years.
Some for twenty.
Some for one.
And I have a feeling some of my closest friends are people I simply haven't met yet.
If this essay inspires anything, I hope it's this:
Be kind.
Be curious.
Introduce yourself.
Invite someone to lunch.
Play the round of golf.
Make the phone call.
Send the text.
Don't build friendships because you hope they'll someday benefit you.
Build them because people matter.
In a world that often feels increasingly disconnected, genuine friendship may be one of the closest things we have to grace.
And if we're fortunate enough to have a handful of people who know us completely and choose to walk beside us anyway, then we're richer than we probably realize.