Conversations vary with different people. It seems that sometimes when you talk to a friend, particularly on the phone, it is to catch up and talk about your day to day life. It is not often that you will get in to a serious conversation and really explore the depths of your silent thoughts. You may touch on a subject, but aren’t we all afraid to speak openly at times? To really say our true feelings without the fear of embarrassment or rejection? What about the intelligent conversations? Where in our life can we fully discuss things with our friends and ask questions about ourselves?

At times, there are friends that we may feel the need to pull away from, for whatever reason. It always seems that women miss talking to each other, though. Their friend could have been less than perfect in certain friendship areas (that only we women seem to understand), but we remember the conversations – we crave the conversation! It could have been nothing more than having someone to talk to about our day or discussing life with children and husbands. Sometimes we wonder if certain friendships are even worth it and do we truly trust this person. However, I think that we have to look at the friendship and decide what we get out of it. Do we get gossip? A free babysitter? Someone to occupy our time? Those may be important issues for some of us and I have learned that each friend is there for a certain reason, for only us to decide. Very rarely will we find one friend that will fulfill every need that we could possibly have.

Yet, it is our friends that give us insight in to ourselves. Not necessarily by making us question our values of how we live, but by having those heart felt conversations on marriage, child birth, divorce, death, religion …. You name it. By having intimate conversations, we are able to truly see ourselves and learn to vocalize our fears, needs and wants through others by realizing that maybe we aren’t alone in this world – that we are all going through it together. By recognizing our friends weaknesses, we will hopefully recognize our own and begin to build on those to make them in to a strength that is powerful – one that we will want to share – something to help us become better reacquainted with our life.

Where can we stimulate our minds more than by discussing life with our friends? In business, we stimulate our minds with numbers and problems where we can feel the gratification when a certain transaction is completed, filing it away as complete. Yet, in friendships, we keep building. We will go through life together and hold each others hands and talk about our experiences. Years later, we will remember that particular time in our lives, regardless if we have become acquaintances with these friends or still remain close and will know that from one conversation, we may have changed our viewpoint on a certain subject. Yet if it wasn’t completely changed, we opened our eyes just a bit to look at a different side of life. Maybe that is the challenging thing about friendships and the conversations – how to remain friends even when our opinions differ.

At times, friends give you a view in to your thoughts that you had not even stopped to realize. Then there are the times that they can hurt you with a simple comment or a reminder of a time that you would rather forget. These are the instances that we have not been completely honest with ourselves or our friends – we do not let them know how we really feel on a subject out of what? Fear? Denial? And only when they make these comments, do we realize how it hurts. If we are good at lying to ourselves, they will not notice the little cringe that tightens our heart. Then again, maybe we should ask ourselves if they are that good of friends that they didn’t realize it would truly hurt….. or maybe they intended to hurt us just to see our reaction – to catch a glimpse of our eyes flickering or our voice faltering when continuing on. Is that fair to our friend – to deny further knowing us and to understand this confusion that rests within us? Wouldn’t it be better to sit down over a cup of coffee and honestly say, “You hurt me”? Or would that put a hindering on the conversation and take away what we need the most – companionship……..