You've Got a Friend

At a party a few years back I was explaining to a guy that I was in the Master's program for Marriage and Family Therapy.  "You mean you want to be a therapist?" he responded incredulously.  "Like a shrink?!  Don't you think people can work out their problems with just good friends?"  The guy was a realtor, too.  I mean seriously, talk about the kettle calling the pot names.  I declined to illuminate the irony for the guy and instead gave some puerile riposte about how people need safety to change and not everyone has close friends blah blah blah; I was hardly a year through my program and had no idea what it really meant to be a therapist.

If I had it to do over again, though, I would tell him this: My therapist and my friends are like my paycheck and all the cool things I get to do with said pay, respectively; I don't need the paycheck to have fun, but it makes it a whole lot easier and gives me a lot more options.

I have been exceedingly fortunate, too, when it comes to good friends.  I seem to be, as they say, peculiarly rich in them.  Of the many superb friends that I have, however, two men stand above the rest.  We have sat with one another through the uttermost depths of despair and danced together (metaphorically) over the apex of ecstasy, and this past weekend we got the opportunity to hike up a snowless Yosemite Valley in January.  We talked about life, the Universe and everything, as we are wont to do, kicking around the world's problems like cherished curs.  We didn't come up with any answers per se, but on the other hand, maybe we came up with the only answer.  And at the end of the day, what other solution is there other than friends being friends?  And yeah, I can honestly say that I'm a better friend for the therapy that I've done.