Collecting

Yesterday, I was listening to a talk radio program, and they were interviewing a star of a Netflix documentary series. I listened intently because she was talking about the importance of giving attention to the friends around you. She said that if your life is wrapped up around the number of likes and the number of social media friends then you need to shut your phone down and look around and relate to the people who are presently in your life.

When the lady who was the radio host came back on air after a commercial break, she introduced the guest, and I was surprised that I knew this young lady. She went to school with our kids, and we have been friends with her family since college days.

Over the years I have valued relationships with my friends. I am honored that I can call so many people my friend. Unfortunately, I don’t get to have face-to-face visits with many of these friends, but a great thing is that when we are able to get together, we can immediately begin our conversation like we saw each other just yesterday. We pick up where we left off even if we have not seen each other for a year.

Is it possible to have too many friends? Now I must explain what I mean by that question. There is the logical notion that trying to keep up with hundreds of friends is not possible. Of course, one could send out a cut-and-paste email, card or letter to all their friends from time to time—like many do at Christmas time. But that is not really how friends communicate; that is how acquaintances communicate.

Occasionally someone will ask me why I am not on Facebook. My response is usually something like this: “I have trouble keeping up with the friends I already have.” Moreover, I don’t want to renew friendships with old high school and college classmates because they are all old people!

Social media has really messed up our idea of friends. We all have heard someone refer to how many friends they have on social media. Some people collect friends or “likes” as a philatelist collects stamps.

I am a collector. A couple of my kids say that I built a barn to collect junk, but I assure them that all that “junk” may someday have a purpose. As a kid I had a stamp collection as well as a coin collection. Somehow, I have managed to keep these collections while living overseas for a large part of my life. However, my baseball collection was discarded. My mother is a cleaning czar, so those shoeboxes of vintage baseball cards from the 50s would up in a dump. Yes, I had all those stars including Nellie Fox, Bobby Richardson, Mickey Mantle, Enos Slaughter, Whitey Ford, Sandy Koufax, and many more. Ironically the cash value today of my childhood stamp and coin collection would be worth the value of one of those cards.

In the end, the value of those collections is not in their cash value, but in their emotional value. My greatest emotional value is the health and welfare of our children and grandchildren.

As a senior citizen looking back on my seven decades of life, I am wishing that I had spent more time on the eternal collection—sharing the Good News with every friend.