Sixty Personal Ideas to Expand a Friendship
Explore different areas/themes and expand in time. Jot down your own list.
I posted on my Substack page yesterday on Ten Questions on Your Relationship to Significant Ones in Your Life. The words expansive and sustainable found in the Washington Post report stayed with me.
From the coffee shop. We can write a note/a few words of comment and hand over our message to a friend or use snail mail (sending in the post) - often a happy surprise for the receiver.
I then began to jot down a list of areas of interest to talk about, to share and respond to in various ways for myself and possibly others. We all probably share some of the themes in common.
If you drew up a list, you would come up with areas of interest to you and perhaps of interest to those close to you. We are curious human beings, after all.
Please understand it is not a To Do list. We do not use the list to find fault with another or with ourselves, nor place pressure anywhere.
You may come up with an idea you hadn’t thought of before or forgotten.
Make your own list and see what you share in common with another.
We may not see the person often or not at all. This may mean we rely partially or totally on different kinds of online communication.
I deleted my Instagram owned by Meta and Twitter (now named X) due to the policies and ill-treatment of those who work for these companies or ill-treatment of those who use these companies for their social networking.
My List of 60 Ideas or Themes
I only need a few ideas from my list which could support a friendship for decades.
1. Activism
2. Art
3. Changes In Our Life
4. Concerts
5. Copy And Paste
6. Diet
7. Drugs - medical/spiritual/plant-based/recreational
8. Emails
9. Exercise
10. Experiences
11. Films (documentaries/movies)
12. Food
13. Gifts
14. Global/Political issues
15. Happiness
16. Health
17. Home
18. Humorous situations
19. Life and Death
20. Links To Books,
21. Links To Useful Websites
22. Links To Youtube
23. Love
24. Meditation
25. Media
26. Mindfulness
27. Mobile Audio, Mobile Video
28. Money
29. Museums
30. Music
31. New Projects
32. Outdoors
33. Paintings
34. PDFs
35. Personal Stories
36. Photographs
37. Playfulness
38. Projects
39. Purpose
40. Relationships
41. Retreats
42. Religion
Salient memories
44. Sending Postcards
45. Sex
46. Social issues
47. Social Media
48. Sport
49. Stress
50. Studies, formal and informal
51. Texts for casual chat and substantial texts
52. The Poets and their Poems
53. Therapeutic Activities
54. Transcendence
55. Travels
56. Voluntary Work
57. Whats App/Signal
58. Work
59. Writing Letters
60. Zoom
MAY ALL BEING DEVELOP A DEEP FRIENDSHIP
MAY ALL BEINGS DEVELOP A LASTING FRIENDSHIP
MAY ALL BEINGS KNOW AN EXPANSIVE FRIENDSHIP