Dear LPG,

Do you know someone like my friend Anthony? I first met him at a sports club many years ago, not long after starting my first job.  He was one of a group of about eight of us who became firm friends quite quickly.  We all had really diverse backgrounds and varied jobs but for some reason, we spent a lot of our time-off meeting up and socialising together.  I mention him rather than the other six because while we all brought something special to the group, there was something really unique about him.

I have always felt that there was something really peaceful about him.  Nothing ever seemed to faze him or change his mood adversely, although he was as ready as the rest of us to celebrate with the other members of the group or commiserate as we shared our snippets of life’s ups and downs, including his.  I can’t remember ever seeing him react to any situation extremely.  I have never seen him get really worried or angry about anything but he very quickly became the group’s ‘go to’ person if any of the others wanted to talk about something that worried them privately.

As they say lots of water has gone under the bridge since then, and as the members got married, had families and moved away, we did more phoning than meeting up but the last time I talked to Anthony I could still hear the calmness that the rest of us never managed to achieve.

I remember wanting to be like him; always at peace with the world, unrattled by any crisis that the world threw his way, and there were a few that he has told us about over the years.  

I once asked him what his secret was and he told me one of the rules his father taught him was not to measure his life against anyone else’s.  Now that I come to think of it, although none of the members were ever actively trying to appear better than the others, that competition element was always there for most of us.  He would tell me that if you have to measure yourself against anyone, choose your former self rather than someone else.

It struck me that he was right.  Throughout life, any group I have ever been part of has seemed to spark the element of competition and, as nice as we are to each other, that need to measure was always there.   It does not happen so often with one-on-one friendships, or as we get a bit older but I have to admit to measuring my achievements as better or worse than those of others and that is something I never ever remember hearing Anthony do.

Most of us are somehow conditioned to need to measure our successes and failures against those of the people around us but if we can take that aspect of friendship away perhaps it would be a big step towards being more un-fazable like Anthony.

UH, Penge.