FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS !!!!!

A close friend asked me recently if I believed in the concept of “friends with benefits”, apparently she thought it was a Western concept enjoyed by us all.

I suggested that she stop watching re-runs of “Sex in the City” and understand that everything on television and Hollywood movies was not in fact based upon reality.

Oh how many of us may wish!!

Yet even the best of us can see the complications and jealousy that would rear its ugly head within such a concept also. Perhaps if all emotion, heart and natural human feelings were removed from the process, it would be a possibility, but truly , I do digress, for I do not believe in such  un-realities of the human psyche.

What I want to discuss this blog is the other ideals of my own “Friends with Benefits”.

You see I have truly been blessed with some of the most amazing friendships a human being can possibly afford.

I’m not talking about the amazing people who bless my life on a daily basis, they know how deeply I appreciate their friendship, well I would hope they do !

And I’m not actually talking about the great friends  with whom I have known for in excess of millennia, and if not call or text every few weeks, months or years, I email usually more frequently. We all lead busy professional lives, no one expects immediate replies to emails or texts, but the answers, the emails and the conversations we do have , when they occur, are absolutely heart felt and real. They are the sought of people with whom a life’s journey is a blessing, people with whom you can ask the hardest questions of life; the unexplored emotions and queries that you parents never answered, and only a closest friend of decades can appreciate.

There is also the friendships that have occurred and are cyclical, and these are the ones I call my true “Friends with Benefits”. All friendships have some benefits, secrets kept, things borrowed, others loaned and shoulders on which to cry.

What I adore about the third type of friendships is their unexpectedness and perfection of timing,

Recently I made a big move. It could have been a tough time for me, but out of the blue came my friends. A co-worker from Singapore that I worked with more than 15 years ago emailed me just yesterday and stated that she had remained in the food industry all these years and was now a renowned food photographer. Her email, resolutely confirming that her ambition and some of my early training of her in the food industry, reaped benefits for the world in a fantastic manner.

Another friend, a male colleague I had not heard from in over a decade, yet a single email this week, connected us again like we had never been apart.

Today, a friend from Canada, Facebooked me to apologise for not being there always when I needed assistance, but that times had been tough for my friend as well.

“Friends with benefits”, in the Sex and the City terminology, a guaranteed emotional hell and heart break galore eventually down the track.

“Friends with benefits” in my world, the land of James Claire, where friends don’t always have to be their, they don’t always have to write, they don’t always text or email, but in your heart they are there, emotionally lifting your soul and spirit in times of true need.

With the added  “benefit”, of a fantastic surprise of connection and reminder of how wonderful your life has been to have met them, enjoyed time with them, and to have been there for each other at some time in the past, when finally you meet, call, text, email, facebook or skype each other in the future.

To all my friends, now, past and future, Thank You !!

Your love, kindness and friendship is the greatest benefit any life could ever ask for!!