Friendships on the road
A question we get all the time is this: How do you have friends, how do you have a social life when you travel all the time?
It is an interesting one.
While traveling, we have made great friends, and we have become better friends. We are extremely social, and we are so well connected to who we are, so openminded and ready for new people, we keep meeting amazing people. Right now I have escaped to a corner in a slow cafe to write, to come back to my inner life.
The thing is this. Friendships do not need to be nourished every day or every week. We have left the normal life, based in one place, and as such we have left the more normal way of having friends. We have to say no to important invitations of close friends, going back only for weddings and funerals (so far only funerals, sadly), book releases and other big life events. We do not drop by for coffee on a regular basis with our friends, and we often miss out on great parties.
The thing is. It is because we are at other parties. With other friends. In other countries.
I feel our need for social life is always being supported, actually, we always have all we need. I know my old friends miss me as much as I miss them, but we are good. We do phonecalls now and then, and I see clearly, that the time we have together when we are back in Denmark for the summers, is much more valuable. We have better conversations, we feel the love more clearly, we dive deep into the relation.
A good friend of mine moved to Spain eight years ago, and she is still my friend. Her children are some of the best friends of my children still.