After coincidently reading in the same week a review of a book that was written by a man on the death of his best friend, which suggests friendship is more emotionally rewarding to us than romantic love, and re-reading a year-long once-a-week postcard project with my own bestie which I hadn’t looked at in about 2 years, a few things struck me, besides how much I have the best best friend ever –

a. My best friend cracks me up. She doesn’t think she’s a particularly funny person but when I read her cards I can hear her voice and the exact way she would be saying these things she’s written to me. It’s not always what she’s written that’s making me laugh but the experience of our own special language with each other. Referencing moments of our history together, quoting our favourite movies, books, shows as part of general conversation and shortening words down to the bare min.

b. Letter writing should definitely not be relegated to those rare moments in life (ie. holidays) when we have time to stop (or when there’s no internet connection). Letter writing is an art, whether you use it to get out of parking tickets or to communicate your profound and/or meaningless views on life to your loved ones. The internet may have brought us closer with those on the other side of the world, but how much better is it to receive a card they picked out themselves, a physical letter they once held in their hands, their own writing on the paper. Surely that’s a greater connection than an email on a screen?

c. How much things have changed and how much they’ve stayed the same, the confusing, continuous dichotomy of life. Time flies by and crawls at the same time. We ride waves of happiness and sadness over and over. We talk about change like we can know what to expect and then it arrives and we find out we had no clue. Jobs change, directions change, people come and go, homes, exercise regimes, addresses, relationships, families all change and all we can do is keep kicking and riding. And maybe one day we’ll be surfing those waves.

d. I miss your postcards, Manisha and I miss writing to you, so this one’s for you. I miss that time in our life when we saw each other almost every day (no exaggeration, it was pretty much everyday) and we still had something to write to each other. The best friendship is the one that never runs out of things to share with each other but no need to say it at all.

But I’m saying it here anyway xxxx