Sunday, March 27, 2005

If Only I had a Reason…

Is it just me? I’m pretty sure it’s not, but are you one of those people that finds it hard to call most people without having a “reason” for calling. Now when I say reason, I mean calling because you need to ask them something “important” or that you need to tell them something “important.” Why can’t we call people just because? Like why can’t the reason be just to call to talk or just to call to see how they are doing because you haven’t talked to them in a while. Here’s why—people are just too busy.

I fear the world in which we live has on such an up-beat pace that we don’t have time to take calls that are “just because.” Here’s the deal, it isn’t necessarily just the person wanting to make the call is too busy, it is also the person on the call receiving end that is too busy. Many times I find myself wanting to call someone, but thinking to myself, “what’s my reason?” They are going to be too busy for me “just to call”, so unless I have a real “purpose” for calling, other than just to say hey and see what’s up, I would only keep them from getting things done that they need to do.

I was thinking this tonight. I have a good friend of mine that I haven’t talked with in a few weeks (I think it’s been about that long), and I would love to just call her and say hi (you know, it is those good friends that can make your day just getting to talk to them). But this is one of those friends that I don’t feel right just calling to call because I know she is always really busy and I don’t want to “bother” her.

I don’t know. I remember I’ve blogged before about people being too busy nowadays, but I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned about people needed to be able to call one another without “reason.”

One person I have talked about this issue with before is my buddy Becca. It’s funny how we’ve both made it clear to one another that we don’t have to have a “reason” to call one another. I’ve had my cell phone since last June and I can tell you honestly that more than half of my minutes on that phone have been spent talking with Becca. Either her calling me or me calling her. Either way we are both on Sprint so we don’t mind taking the minutes! HA!

I think friendships that have a lot of just “talking” to be talking can be stronger than those that need a “reason” to talk. I mean what kind of a reason does a person have to come up with to talk about some of the best things in life to talk about? Many of the most treasured conversations I’ve had with people have just come up out of the clear blue. Whether it is in depth conversations on values or beliefs in general or conversations that are specifically on religion or friendship or family or other issues in life. Heck, my best friend in high school and I could talk on the phone for hours. A short call would last an hour. Our record was 6 hours one day. We were watching some NBA playoff games on the phone together and just talking the whole time through! HA!

Okay, so I realize we all don’t have 6 hours to spend on the phone…HA! We were in high school, give me a break, there’s nothing better to do with your time then…HA! But I do think we should be able to take a few minutes out of our busy lives to check up on one another and just say “hey.” Look at it this way, it is a blessing to have a friend that cares enough to pick up the phone…THAT my friends is something to be thankful for in this world today!

1 comment:

Holly said...

I've often thought about this very thing. There are actually many times when I want to call certain friends, for no good reason other than to hear their voice or see what's going on in their life, but then I start thinking "They're probably gonna be like 'why did she call?'" Then, also, I start thinking, "If I call them just to talk, which neither of us normally do, are they going to think i'm depressed or something's wrong so I decided to start calling people in my life?" lol. Right now I'm thinking "Why do I care what they think?" But I do sometimes. I think it's hard not to care when you care enough to feel like you don't want to be a bother.

I, too, used to talk to my highschool friends on the phone for hours on end. It's funny because, in highschool, it was no big deal. Even though we'd talk all day in school, so would we talk the rest of the day on the phone.

Still, with a lot of my friends, we randomly call each other just out of the blue and the conversations are usually joy and random talk -- not "why did I call them?/why did they call me?" Friends should never have to ask such questions, yet it's hard not to sometimes.

Nice post!