The Inside Job : Day 57 - Why friends are So Important to happiness in life.

"A True Friend Stabs You In The Front"
Oscar Wilde

What's the secret to a happy life? There are so many things you can list. It's not as simple as one particular element and it will be different for every individual. Friendship must be pretty high on the list though.

There was a brilliant book a couple of years ago by a palliative care nurse who spent 20 years caring for the terminally ill. She wrote a book about her experiences, particularly what people close to death wished they would have done with their life.

It highlighted a fascinating insight into personal contentment and what we could do with our lives to make it happier. If only we could grasp some of those things now until it's too late.

The top 10 was;

1 - I wish I would have cared less what people thought of me

2 - I wish I would have been more true to myself

3 - I wish I would have worked less

4 - I wish I would have told people what I truly felt

5 - I wish I would have spent more time with those I love

6 - I wish I would have followed my passion in life

7 - I wish I would have lived more in the moment

8 - I wish I would have spent more time with friends

9 - I wish I would have taken better care of myself

10 - I wish I wouldn't have taken myself so seriously

All great subjects and worthy of a blog post themselves.

However on Saturday I was invited to some of my oldest friends for dinner, making me think of number 8 on the list. 'I wish I could have spent more time with friends.'

Firstly it's always good to know exactly what friend means - a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard. So a friend is someone your fond of.

Good friends are worth their weight in gold. For a variety of reasons. Some help you emotionally. Some you can have a laugh with, some share similar experiences. Some are old friends, manufactured friends (if you have kids and need a network) some are recovery friends. All different kinds. Basically it's good to have friends. Sometimes they are closer than your family. They play an important role in our lives. Life is not complete without them.

But what I wanted to talk about today is old friends. The ones who know you the best. The ones who have seen it all. All the different phases. Shared experience. Shared humour. The sort of friends that you can not see for ages and then pick up again where you left off. The ones you can truly be yourselves too. I like those friends.

I'm very lucky. I have a great network of old friends from teenage years. Of course everyone has now grown up, got married and had kids (other than me), so I don't get to see them much, but underneath the responsibilities of being a 'grown up', they are still the same raging lunatics that attracted us to each other anyway.

There is no pomp, ego, niceties, or small talk. It is full on banter, fun and an opportunity to let go and have fun. That's what happened on Saturday night.

Some of my dearest old friends invited me and the missus (she'll hate me calling that - so 80's) over for dinner with a few others. Seeing as it was St Davids day she did a welsh themed dinner. They went to so much effort and served up a proper delicious feast.

Kids ran around everywhere. It is a joyful house. It was a pleasure to be there. It was fun. A chance to unwind. A chance to be totally offensive and laugh our heads off. It was top stuff.

Sometimes when you get into recovery you can become a little institutionalised and maroon yourself from real life. You can become slightly narrow minded about certain things and forget there is a whole load of people out there who have different views on things.

I may not agree with what some of my friends think but when you get off opinions and views and get into banter and fun then it doesn't matter. It's good to let rip sometimes. To feast. To share. To have fun.

We played a brilliant and highly offensive board game. No body was on there phones. Everyone was at the table for hours. Plenty of offensive banter was flying around and the hours just whizzed by. I loved it and it reminded me how much of a role friends play in our lives. I feel truly blessed.

Having said that, the host made a stunner of a desert, an enormous tiramsu which was placed right by my plate. Now I'm not usually one for such a desert but after tucking into a bowl. Holy fuck it was amazing.

Back again I went, again and again. Until I could take no more. I'd done about 1/3 of it. It was so nice that I swear to god if there was a choice of licking out my girlfriend or the bowl it would be a major decision.

I relented for around an hour, but you cannot place a bowl of fresh cream based desert right next to a compulsive over-eater. Within 10 minutes it was all gone. I was now half man half mascarpone. If I would have eaten any more I would have been mooing. Fuck me I was stuffed.

So we left around 2.30. Winching ourselves into the car. Waistcoat popping. Elasticated jeans straining. Fed, full and happy. A top night all round.

I'm a lucky boy to have friends, and especially lucky to have ones that are shit hot cooks. I'll book myself in for next Saturday too. And everyone until I die. Let's see how long it will take then for them to show me my friend P45.

I'll leave it to a great man to sum it up;

"Friendship is not something you learn in school. If you don't learnt the meaning of friendship you haven't really learnt anything in life."
Muhammad Ali

Today I learnt something

Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.

Muhammad Ali

Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.

Muhammad Ali

Together We Are Stronger

Nicholas Evans