Our world faces many challenges and crises-poverty, violence, human rights violations-that threaten peace, security, development and social harmony among the peoples of the world and within themselves.
To address these problems, it is necessary to tackle their root causes by fostering and defending solidarity, which can manifest itself in many ways, such as friendship.
Through friendship, cultivating bonds, strengthening trust, which contributes to the fundamental changes necessary to achieve lasting stability, weaving a network of social support that protects us all and generating passion for achieving a better world, all united for the common good.
There are people in our lives who make us happy by the simple chance of having crossed our path. Some walk all the way by our side, watching many moons go by, but others we barely see between one step and another. We call them all friends and there are many kinds of them.
I leave you with our dear Jorge Bucay’s story “The Friendship Tree” that makes us meditate on the value of Friendship.
Perhaps each leaf of a tree characterizes each of our friends. The first one that is born from the bud is our father and our mother, it shows us what life is. Then come friends, siblings, with whom we divide our space so that they can flourish with us.We get to know the whole family of leaves whom we respect and wish well.
But destiny introduces us to other friends, whom we did not know would cross our path. Many of them we call friends of the soul, of the heart. They are sincere, they are true. They know when we are not well, they know what makes us happy.
There are also those friends for a while, a vacation, a few days or a few hours. They are used to put many smiles on our face during the time we are close.
Speaking of close we cannot forget the distant friends, those who are at the tip of the branches and when the wind blows they always appear between leaf and leaf.
Time passes, summer goes, autumn approaches and we lose some of our leaves, some are born in another summer and others remain for many seasons.
But what leaves us happiest is to realize that those that fell are still close by, nourishing our roots with joy. They are moments of wonderful memories of when they crossed our path.
I wish you leaf of my tree, peace, love, health, luck and prosperity. Today and always…. Simply because each person that passes through our life is unique. They always leave a little of themselves and take a little of us with them… There will be those who took a lot, but there will not be those who left us nothing.
Next July 30, 2022 is the International Day of Friendship and for the NGO Recicla-Alicante this is one of the greatest responsibilities of our life and the obvious proof that two souls do not meet by chance.
Maria Boquera Perales – Social Worket at NGO Recicla-Alicante
