043. ...this incident of stolen shoe design...

(morning thinking)

Photo by Alexander Rotker on Unsplash

Not to give the ending away, but the conclusion of The Remains Of The Day concerns warmth and connection. It's a beautiful book that I look forward to reading again in the future.

I've just set the finished novel down next to my empty coffee cup and I'm sitting here with Juno talking about endings and how we might feel we've done with the friendships and connections we made when we reflect at the end of our lives. I'm doing most of the talking, she's a cat and doesn't contribute out loud in any credible way.

Also, she's a middle aged house cat so it's possibly a little tasteless to talk about friendship groups with her. She's pals with my pals. She doesn't have her own circle of cat chums. Although she's not shy when people visit. She gets a lot of love and attention and she does seem to have favourites so perhaps it's ok.

My journal prompt yesterday asked what I was doing to avoid false friendships and bad influences. In answering I questioned what I was doing to nurture the positive, long held, relationships that have sustained me since childhood.

I have a small group of friends with whom I've been close since high school. Plus partners and kids we're a group that would struggle to find a reasonably priced holiday rental with a table long enough to accommodate everybody. That is, assuming we were ever able to align our schedules and gather all together for a weekend break.

There's often time in my week for exploring new friendships. I think I've pushed myself to embrace opportunities to meet new people and explore new influences because it was something that caused me anxiety in the past. I've learnt to lean into my fears.

I'm wondering this morning whether I have worked hard enough to really deeply connect with the people whose journeys have run parallel with my own. I wonder how well I truly understand my oldest friends. I think it's easy to take those relationships for granted a little.

The last ten years have seen a massive change in who I am. My character has grown. The same will have happened to the people I've known for most of a lifetime and I've perhaps not invested as heavily in these new versions of old companions.

I have a friend who, in high school, drew trainers. Sounds weird out of context but this was the peak of the 1990s Trainer Wars and there were passionate partisan lines drawn between the followers of Nike (as he was) and those who'd thrown in with Reebok or Adidas. There were even some fanatical fringe outliers who's affinity lay with Troop, SPX or ASICS. The friend who drew trainers was obsessed and talented. He designed variations on Nike's core offerings, adding design innovations and flare of his own. He sent one detailed cutting edge shoe schematic off to Nike HQ and we later saw it appear (uncredited!) on shoe shop shelves. Nike took this talented teen's idea and made millions from it! Maybe. That's how my outraged childhood memory tells it. Despite the injusticr we felt we were all extremely proud of our brilliant friend. The point (there is one) is that he didn't become a trainer designer, his life went in a completely different direction, and I don't think I've ever talked with him about this. I don't know if he daydreams about Swooshes or looks at current styles critically with a designer's eye. Or if he even remembers this incident of stolen shoe design.

In Japan there is a social concept of Moai.

Mo•ai (/mo,eye/) Japan

noun

1. A group of lifelong friends

2. A social support group that forms in order to provide varying support from social, financial, health, or spiritual interests

He, my trainer designer brother, is part of my Moai. One of a small group who made me. In Okinawa, Japan, people regularly live healthily into late old age. This is, in part, attributed to their closely held and highly valued friendships.

I think it's very easy to fall into habits with these long held connections. We assume that they'll always be there and that whatever's not been asked or said can be brought up in the future. A dear friend might eff off to Australia or a remote cottage in the hills and our hangout frequency switches from regular to rare. People die. We never really know when a last meetup will happen. It's hard to predict and harder to act on mitigating the heartachey repercussions of those possibilities.

Spell check liked heartachey. Weird.

Or is it? Maybe our society is so complex and busy that we find more regular room for new adjectives to describe sadness and loss.

Or maybe it's just ripples echoing out from Billy Ray Cyrus.

Whatev's. I'm messaging old friends and making plans to hang out. One to one. Doing whatever it is they like to do most would be nice. We could all do a bit of that over winter. It might stave off some of the darkness.

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