Saturday, May 30, 2009

Real Friends

I just read an interview of Jay Leno in the latest Rolling Stone magazine. He is a really down-to-earth guy, and I respect him a lot. One of the things he talked about is "friends."

Like Mr. Leno, I have a lot of acquaintances. Not as many as him, but after working in high profile positions in business for 20 years here in America and then another 15 years in Europe, I know a lot of people. Thousands of people, really. Lots of people in El Paso, Texas, New Iberia, Louisiana, and Kerkrade, The Netherlands know who I am, even though I have never met them and I have no idea at all who they are.

But I don’t have that many close friends. It used to take almost both hands to count them, and now that I am getting older, I can easily count my real friends with the fingers of one hand.

In the article Leno describes the best way to know who your true friends are: When they willingly offer to give you a ride to the airport. Only genuine friends will do this. When the ride is 88 miles (143 km) one way from Kerkrade in The Netherlands, to Zaventem and the Brussels National Airport Belgium this certainly is just about as close as you can get without being blood brothers.
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