As kids we cherished our friends, today we’re lonely adults …

Do you remember as a kid how highly valued friends were?

As children, we would get excited about any opportunity to make a new friend … whether it was going to school, playing a sport, or joining a club, the great value of all those things was the chance to make friends.

Friendship was one of the most important aspects of our lives as kids.

Today, in America, we’re experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. We’ve not only given up our pursuit of aggressively making friends, we’ve failed at nurturing the friendships we had, and find ourselves increasingly, and incredibly, lonely.

A story reported by The Independent reflects just how lonely some of us are …

The fish friend program caught the imagination of the internet after radio producer Michelle Cook tweeted a picture of the fishbowl and sign. The caption read: “My friend is staying in a hotel in Belgium. They’ve offered her the option of renting a fish for the night, in case she’s lonely.”

Hotel manager David Dillen told The Independent that the fish rental service has been running for several years and is popular with guests.

He said: “We started a few years ago. The idea was to surprise our guests, as we always try to do. It’s brilliant to see how people react to it. They smile, they take pictures to put on social media. We rent a few fish per week.”

Just how lonely do you have to be to rent a fish for an evening?

Our trend away from nurturing friendships and toward loneliness has various contributing factors:

Changing values. As kids, we highly valued our friends. Do you remember feeling like you could take on any challenge in life as long as you had a single friend in your corner? Now, in the midst of our loneliness, we make excuses, telling ourselves that as adults we have responsibilities that demand the redirection of time and attention. It’s true that as an adult you have different and demanding responsibilities, but no one said you had to change the value of a friend. To be a good friend as an adult will mean saying that in spite of your responsibilities as an adult, you will remain committed to your real friendships and will make time for them. That may not be easy to do, but chances are your schedule has some things that can be re-valued and re-prioritized in order to make a little time with friends. It doesn’t take a lot of time to keep a friendship well-nurtured, but it does take some.

Corrupting values. It isn’t just that our values change as we grow up, sometimes our values become corrupt. Instead of continuing to highly value our friendships, we give new and greater value to making money, obtaining things, becoming successful, building status, etc., more than we do our friends. When we corrupt our values, we can’t be a good friend, we won’t value making friends, and we’ll fail at nurturing the friendships we have.

A turn inward. For too many of us, “growing up” meant turning inward. We heard the constant mantra to go chase our dreams, and so we left our friends in the dust as we set out to pursue our desires without consideration of others. When you make your life “all about me,” all you will have is you.

There’s a story about an ingenious teenager who was tired of reading bedtime stories to his little sister, so he decided to record several of her favorite stories on tape. He told her, “Now you can hear your stories anytime you want. Isn’t that great?” She looked at the machine for a moment and then replied, “No. It hasn’t got a lap.”

Real and enduring friendship requires an investment of self — it’s interaction with YOU that your friends value. Are you making time for your friends? Are you giving your friendships a high value that’s reflected in how you prioritize your time and attention?

Scotty