As I sat eating my carefully designed salad at Whole Foods today I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on the conversations around me.  They were free for the hearing.

I was surprised and saddened by the similarities of these conversations (three of them), while none of these articulating duos probably knew each other their conversations were almost identical in theme: they were all speaking pejoratively about some absent third party.

As far as I know all three of these anonymous parties were horrid people or just dopey folks incapable living their own lives with any savoir faire.  I don’t think that’s the case though, I think that for some reason our first instinct when sitting down for a chat is to talk about other people.

I’m no saint, I’ve certainly talked my fair share of shit in my day, but I guess hearing it so overwhelmingly present in the air around me made think there’s something really sad about that.  I think I found another New Year’s Resolution, think before I speak about other people.

I’m going to go ahead and say that Plato was really on to something when he said:

“Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle”

Judging others is as ingrained in us as judging ourselves, but as a culture methinks we’re all judging everyone a little too much…including ourselves.  It’s important to remember that we’re all just human, fallible, funny, humans.  We ain’t perfect and neither are our friends and frenemies.

I’ve never been the kind of girl who could borrow clothes from friends.  I have always had friends of totally different sizes.  I couldn’t even borrow clothes from my mother, as she’s an adorable 4’11, and I happen to take after my tall strapping father.  To all those blokes that think they can judge what a girl will look like when she gets older by looking at her mother, you my friends are shit out of luck with me, I’m the spitting image of daddy dearest.

I’ve never seen or read The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants­, but I like the idea.  A single pair of pants that magically fits Ugly Betty and Chanel’s new IT girl.  Love it.  Alack, tis fiction, there’s not a pair of pants with that sort of spandex awesomeness to be had in the real world.  Instead, I accessorize.

The Sisterhood of the Travelling Bag, started when a friend was sad, and three of us went shopping, she loved a bag, so we bought it for her (because sometimes you just want to do anything to make your friends happy), she refused it, and we hatched the idea that we would share the bag, and share the bag we have.  I must say it’s held up quite well.  Much better than if it had always been in my possession.

I’ve heard of groups of women doing this with expensive jewelry before, but never with a cheap bag from Target.  I guess we work within our means.

The best part of the travelling bag, is the stories that come with it.  As soon as it changes hands, stories of where the bag has been, what happened while it was in our possession, what dress we coupled it with, etc.  It’s all sorts of girltastic fun.

In reality, it’s not about the bag, it’s about sharing with people we love, about having stories and something in common.  A bond in the form of blue and white fabric.  I love that bag, because I love the friends I share it with, I love hearing the stories of their lives and the excitement in their voices when they pass it off.

While my travelling whatnot might be on the budget end, why not take this idea and use it to indulge in something beautiful that you and your friends love.   Consider it budget indulging

Being the friendspert that I claim to be; I once had a friend ask me what I thought about ditching friends.  Truth be told, I think most friendships have an expiration date.  While there are definitely moments in life that we have to “dump” friends, very rare are the moments that we have to brush off our “it’s not you, it’s me” speech so practiced with lovers past.  Friendships more than likely just seem to phase themselves out. Breaking off a friendship often ends without much effort at all, unless of course there’s an argument, friends just seem to vanish from our lives when they no longer seem to fit into our lifestyles.

A recent study has been released to make you feel less asshole-tastic.  Most people replace half of their friends every seven years.Huh, that’s interesting, that’s about the same time it takes for us to replace our tastebuds.  Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst at Utrecht University in the Netherlands studied the friendships of 1,007 people between the ages of 18 to 65.  What he found was that while the number of friendships in our inner sanctum seems to remain fairly constant, our core group of friends seems to be on a seven-year rotation cycle.

Now, having been the kind of person who has had the same BFFs her entire life, I think that there is a limit to the truth of this study.  I can’t help but notice, however, that while my closest friends haven’t changed much since the days of training bras and crushing on varying members of The New Kids on the Block, my close friends outside that small select group, do seem to ebb and flow in favor.

None of this is particularly shocking, seven years is a long time.  In seven years you can leave high school and end up with a masters degree; you can fall in love, get married, have oodles of babies; you can move to another country, change careers, change genders!  Our priorities and circumstances change as our lifestyles change, it only seems natural that with that will bring new friending opportunities.

I’ve decided to take the optimistic approach to this study.  While we may lose (or demote) half of our close friends in seven years, we continue to maintain and nurture the other half.  Just think how rich our lives can be if we’re forever nurturing old friendships, while continuing to foster and create new ones.

I’m a firm believer that people are in your life for as long as they need to be.  Some people need to be forever, and some for a little while.  Each person in our life fills a different role.  Some of those roles exist solely for a transitory moment in time. Wouldn’t it be nice if our romantic relationships could end the way many of our friendships end, just fade out without yelling or crying, just the memory of someone you loved being with for a moment in time?