Life Upside Down

“When you find people who not only tolerate your quirks but celebrate them with glad cries of ‘me too!’ be sure to cherish them.

Because those weirdos are your tribe.”

Anyone who’s ever met my Dad will attest to the fact that he’s a talker. I learned a lot of maxims as a kid: “The perfect is the enemy of the good,” “Be the tortoise, not the hare,” “Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect  practice makes perfect.”

“Only quality people,” he would tell me, as a dorky nine-year-old. I would nod and agree and pretend that I knew what he meant. It was one of those things that your parents and teachers tell you when you’re young and you know it’s going to matter later, but you have no way of knowing how or really, why.

I think I’m starting to understand it.

Things have shifted a lot in my life over the last eighteen months, and I’ve come to rely heavily on the people around me. This network has grown from a silvery spider web to a patchwork quilt thickness of love and trust. (If we’re thinking in terms of bases, we’ve gone from tortilla thickness to deep dish crust.)

This interdependence takes a lot of forms: potlucks, parties with ridiculous themes and mandatory costumes (British Tacky Christmas, anyone?), planning each other’s birthdays- and now baby showers (!), Christmas Day spent with friends and their families…

There’s been a lot of living for all of us in the last few years, and that intensity accelerates bonds. I feel like I’ve known this gang since we were kids.

I don’t look at my friends in terms of measuring them, so perhaps quality isn’t quite the right word. The principle is what’s resonated with me, and I think it’s true that what you need in your friends changes from time to time, and certain friends will come in and out of your life with those changes. For some people and certain periods, that means letting go of what’s not serving you.  Sometimes people come into our lives for reasons other than just circumstance.

I met my friend Micky on a scuba trip in December 2012, and through her was introduced to a menagerie of people who have become my tribe, my Brisbane family. These people have seen me through so much, and I’m privileged to be part of their lives.

Boy, is there quality. There are a lot of qualities, actually, but mainly there’s just a heap of love.