Today I want to express my appreciation to all of you my friends. Thank you for being my friend and letting me be your friend. This includes members of my family, blood and in-law, and starts especially with my wife, Ingrid, my best friend.
You, my friends, make up a widely and wildly disparate group of people. Some of the variations are common to most people's friends : I have friends who are old, friends who are young, male and female, friends of different nationalities, racial backgrounds and different economic and educational backgrounds. Many of my friends are apolitical while others are decidedly left or right wing or fringe. I even have a very few friends who, like me, are Green supporters. I have American friends who support the Republicans and some who are Democrats. Some of my Canadian friends seem to know more about American political issues than Canadian. Some Canadian friends are wannabe Americans and some define their identity as decidedly not-American.
To my knowledge none of my friends are neo-Nazis and if you are a closet neo-Nazi then I don't want to be your friend any more.
I have been out of South Africa so long I no longer know who supports which parties but I think the ANC and the DA account for most of you.
Some of my friends are Québécois who think that the best thing for Quebec is to leave the Canadian federation. I have some English speaking Canadian friends who think that the best thing for Canada is for Quebec to leave the Canadian federation.
Some friends are deeply religious, whether Jewish, Christian, Hindu or Moslem. Some are decidedly atheist. Some don't know and don't care if there is a God or gods and aren't sure what the difference is between atheism and agnosticism. They don't mind if I pray for them. Thank you.
I have friends who are straight as a laser beam and other friends who are, or whose children are, gay, lesbian or queer.
I have friends who are passionately Pro-Life and others who are just as passionately Pro-Choice. For the record, I am passionately Pro-Life but I seriously doubt the usefulness of hurling insults at people who believe differently to me.
I am under the impression that very few of you have a similar mix of ingredients to me. It is highly probable that most of my friends would not like most of my other friends. I should be used to that by now. My mother would not have liked many of my friends and I was careful not to bring them home.
But I like you all and I value your friendship. Heck, some of you even asked me to be your friend on FaceBook! I value that, especially considering one of my own family clicked ignore to my friend request !:-) I can live with that. We are good friends in other ways.
Once again, thank you for being my friend and thank you for letting me be your friend.
This is my daughter Miriam (right) and her friend Liora.
Childhood friends and still friends today.
