One day I dropped in on an old friend. We were seated in his study------ surrounded by maybe a thousand books, and fell into deep conversation about everything from personal computers to the life of Beethoven. The subject finally turned to friendship. “Relationships are mysteries,” my friend said. “Some endure. Others fall apart.” Gazing out his window to the wooded hills, he pointed toward a neighboring farm. “ Used to be a large barn over there. It was solidly built, probably in the 1870s. But like so many of the places around here, it went down because people left for richer lands in the Midwest. No one took care of the barn. Its roof needed mending; rainwater got through and dripped down inside the posts and beams.” One day a high wind came along, and the whole barn began to tremble. “You could hear this creaking first, and then a sharp series of cracks and a tremendous roaring sound. Suddenly the whole thing fell apart.” My friend said he had turned the incident over and over in his mind, and finally came to recognize some parallels between building a barn and building a friendship: no matter how strong you are, how notable your achievements, you have enduring significance only in your relationship to others. “To make your life a sound structure that will serve others and fulfill your own potential,” he said, “you have to remember that strength, however powerful, can't endure unless it has the support of others. Go it alone and you'll inevitably fail.” “Relationships have to be cared for,” he added, “like the roof of a barn. Letters unwritten, thanks unsaid, promises broken, quarrels unsettled------ all this acts like rainwater running through the roof, weakening the link between the beams.” My friend shook his head. “It was a good barn. And it would have taken very little to keep it in good repair. Now it will probably never be rebuilt.”