Today, up at 5:30 a.m. I decided to bake a large loaf of bread. I normally cook using 500 grams of flour but this time I decided to increase the amount by 50% and I doubled the amount of yeast. As a result, I have a loaf of bread that looks very much like a football and will probably keep us going for the best part of a week.

Each day I comb about 30 offerings from all the websites and services that I have subscribed to and today I read a lovely piece ‘the joy of making unexpected new friends’. The theme is the divide between the vaxxers and the anti-vaxers plus the demonization and marginalization that the latter suffer. I’m not really interested in discussing the political or scientific side of this very well written and human communication but I’m more interested in talking about making new friends.

We have contacts, acquaintances, friends, and the odd soulmate. The latter I define as someone who has such a close connection to you that you almost know what each other is going to say before you speak. If you have two or three of those in your lifetime you are rich indeed.

‘I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever’.
― Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Poems

For reasons of self-protection, most people carry around with them what I call overcoats. Tesco man does not reveal his feelings although he may be very social at heart. The person in the local store greets you warmly because that is part of professional behavior. My contact at the local garage introduces me to various people who might buy a car from me.
An acquaintance is someone you have met and know slightly but not well. We can say that someone has a large circle of friends and acquaintances engaged in beekeeping. An acquaintance becomes a friend when there is a sense of commonality of your spirit and where you feel you can share personal details without fear of being misunderstood.

Soulmates find you by some mysterious mechanism of attraction. You are doing something else completely and someone pops out of nowhere and you chat away as if you’ve known each other all your lives. The point is you never know when this is going to happen. In this diary I have given many examples of complete strangers that I have engaged with and felt a rapport with and although the tacit understanding is that we will not see each other again a bond has been formed so that if we met again it would be like we we’re only apart for a few minutes.

Some people complain of not having enough friends. The point is that a person who sits in a corner with a paper bag over their head is not going to find that friends magically appear. We need to show our colors by expressing views on certain things, by saying we are interested in things and going along to clubs and associations. Yes, they still exist but you have to dig them out or maybe even form one yourself.

If I think of all the good friends I have met over the past nearly 80 years now they were all without exception unplanned and unexpected. I did not wake up so saying ‘today, I really must make a new friend’. My task is to free myself from worry and anxiety, which most people can pick up with their intuition very easily, and just get on and enjoy my life. There is nothing so attractive as a happy bubbling person.

You may think that God has doubt you a short hand of cards. It may be however that you are not ready to meet the right people and you need to do more homework work on your state of mind for example by being more outgoing, more flexible, more curious, more genuinely interested in the human condition and what makes people tick. I am not saying you conduct interviews with people but be generally aware and alert or anyone in the facility who might be happy to engage.

In the phase of my professional life when I advised people about new relationships after they got divorced or that they had separated from someone, I suggested that the best way of making sure the past is in the past is to thoroughly forgive the ex partner otherwise they will tend to pick up other people who have been divorced or separated and it will be a marriage of sorrows not a marriage of souls

If your compass is pointing in the right direction in other words towards unity as opposed to divisiveness then you will send a message out to similar people who sometimes without knowing why will come and talk to you.

If you feel that you are without the right friends at the moment, I suggest you give daily thanks for your health and strength and maybe look up the people that you haven’t spoken to for some time and give them a call and ask them how they are.

I could say that if you are genuinely interested in encouraging and supporting others you are less likely to be lonely. Having said that, we all have our ups and downs.  I recently saw the owner of a multi million dollar company in tears because he did not think he would find a suitable partner after his messy divorce.