“Celebrate a friend’s victory. There is more than enough room in the universe for all of us to do well.” – Dawn Onley

By Dawn Onley

One of the reasons why I love Facebook is I get to read all of the exciting things my friends are doing.

They are writing books, acting, teaching, launching businesses or moving up the corporate ladder, becoming chefs, becoming moms/grandmoms/aunties, becoming coaches, real estate investors and financial gurus, lawyers and doctors. Becoming fit. Becoming self-aware.

This excites me so much! You should hear me talking about my friends’ ventures to my husband, my mom, my sister, and my besties. I think Mark Zuckerberg created the love emoji just for me because I can’t love their posts enough.

I get so giddy when my friends and family are happy, you would think that I have a stake in their success.

Well, actually you’d be right. In fact, we all have a stake in the welfare of our loved ones. Not in the financial sense of the word, per se, but in the support sense. We all represent but a small part of our shared humanity and despite our society’s increasing move toward individuality, we still need each other to survive. We are still at our best when we have people rooting us on and when we root on other people.

It’s as natural as the air we breathe. We are as interconnected as the fingers on our hands.

When we want the best for each other and support each other’s dreams, we are helping to bring this about. We become our sisters’ keepers. We have our brothers’ backs. The same is true when we feel sad when the people we love are sad and when we help those we love who need help.

Stakes hold up vegetables and flowers in the garden to give them support and to keep them from toppling over. That’s what friends do, too.

“I am a big believer in the notion that as a species we are better together than we are apart, that the common core of our shared humanity is stronger than that which seeks to marginalize us and fractionalize us and turn us against each other,” said screenwriter and producer, J. Michael Straczynski.

So keep those updates coming! Let me see your kids smiling at their graduations or when they get their driver’s license. Let me gaze happily at your travel photos. Let me renew my faith each time you share your miracles. Let me wish you a happy anniversary or check out your new flame. Let me pray for you when you mourn. Let me congratulate you when you excel. Let me root for your success, as I would my own. Let me encourage you when you doubt your own brilliance.

Let us support each other, in good times and bad.

Let us be the stake that holds our friendships close and strong.

We need each other.