Best Friends

The best friends are those who can tickle your brain, make you laugh, have a great sense of humour, are witty, just have the right dose of sarcasm and are critically honest yet remain kind.

You volley back and forth ideas and engage in intellectual fencing, agreeing, or opposing without rending or wounding each other. You are both thoughtful without being morose, and silly without being foolish. You may opine upon and critique a range of ideas or persons without engaging in calumny.

Between you, honesty is not negotiable and loyalty is standard. Trust is the tie that binds. You share that which matters the most. Caring glues you together. You laugh together, a lot. You watch out for each other, catch each other when you fall.

You may be in each other's company, yet remain taciturn. You spend time away from each other without weakening your bond. You may be near together yet allow yourselves to wander silently in your own minds, thinking, reading, meditating. You are never bored with one another because neither of you are boring.

Many people go through life looking for such friends. If you find even just one, you have more than enough. It took you a long time to get where you are. Keep each other.

• "Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years." — Richard Bach
• 
• One of my best friends, now departed this world in 2019.  This photo of Rod and I taken in 2006 at a hat party.  Miss you my friend.

Remember Back When

Remember back when you were a kid? You would just do things. You never thought to yourself, “What are the relative merits of learning tennis versus soccer?” You just ran around the playground and played tennis and soccer. 

You built sand castles and played tag and asked silly questions and looked for bugs and dug up grass and pretended you were a sewer monster. 

Nobody told you to do it, you just did it. You were led merely by your curiosity and excitement. 

And the beautiful thing was, if you hated tennis, you just stopped playing it. There was no guilt involved. There was no arguing or debate. You either liked it or you didn’t. 

And if you loved looking for bugs, you just did that. There was no second-level analysis of, “Well, is looking for bugs really what I should be doing with my time as a child? Nobody else wants to look for bugs, does that mean there’s something wrong with me? How will looking for bugs affect my future prospects? 

There was no bullshit. If you liked something, you just did it.

A child does not walk onto a playground and say to herself, “How do I find fun?” She just goes and has fun. 

If you have to look for what you enjoy in life, then you’re not going to enjoy anything.

And the real truth is that you already enjoy something. You already enjoy many things. You’re just choosing to ignore them.

“You never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”
― Dr. Seuss

Joseph back in 2008 enjoying interacting with the lambs

Tribute to Beryl Florence Cameron

My dear beloved Mum passed away in her sleep on 25 January 2024 at the age of 101 years, 9 months and 20 days. 05/03/1922 - 25/01/2024.

What a wonderful long life she had, an inspiration to all who knew her, generous in everyway, who will be loved forever and never forgotten.

My brother-in-law found a poem that blew me away, written by Linda Ellis called THE DASH.

Between the time we are born and the time we die, there lies a dash of events that sum up our life. According the Linda Ellis, this dash represents our whole life.

I read of a man who stood to speak
at the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on the tombstone
from the beginning...to the end.
 

He noted that first came the date of birth
and spoke the following date with tears,
but he said what mattered most of all
was the dash between those years.
 

For that dash represents all the time
that they spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved them
know what that little line is worth.
 

For it matters not, how much we own --
the cars...the house...the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
and how we spend our dash.
 

So, think about this long and hard.
Are there things you'd like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
that can still be rearranged.
 

If we could just slow down enough
to consider what's true and real,
and always try to understand
the way other people feel.
 

And be less quick to anger
and show appreciation more,
and love the people in our lives
like we've never loved before.
 

If we treat each other with respect
and more often wear a smile,
remembering this special dash
might only last a little while.
 

So, when your eulogy is being read
with your life's actions to rehash,
would you be proud of the things they say
about how you spent YOUR dash?

Mum and I at the Kirribilli Club in Sydney celebrating her 101st birthday in March 2023.