Friends

Friends…

When you think of the word friend, what comes to mind?  What is a real friend? 

 For me a friend is someone who you can trust, who you love, and have an understanding relationship with.

Let’s start with trust.  Trust can mean many different things to different people.  For me trust is being able to talk to someone and divulge information about yourself without that information moving along to other ears.  Trust is trusting that person with your life.  Yes, I took it as far as saying with your life.  If you were on life support and needed someone to say whether you live or not do you trust your best friend to make the right decision for you?  Perhaps that to deep so let me keep it simple.  Do your trust your friends with your children, with your bank account information, with your sensitive information?  Trust can go in so many different directions.

A friend is someone you love and loves you back.  Can you honestly say you love your friends?  I keep a very small tight circle of friends because although I do honestly feel I love everyone in this world, even those who have betrayed me, there is a different type of love a friend gives.  A friend embodies a type of love in which you feel safe, accepted, and understood and you give the same feeling back in return.

Understanding means so much and is often misunderstood.  I personally don’t feel understood by many including family members.  To really understand where someone is coming from and their intentions means really knowing a person which involves listening and awareness.  Not many humans are good at listening.  Listening is an art in which matters so much.  If I consider a person a friend, I also consider them a great listener.  No, I’m not one to go on and on about my problems because to be honest that’s just annoying to only hear someone’s problems in a friendship.  Listening involves being aware of someone’s non-verbal communication as well as their audible and being able to pick up on their subtle cues when in person.  A great friend can also pick up on subtle cues even over the phone because they know you so well.

The thing about life is some friends come and go and some are lifelong.  Throughout life you will lose friends and make new ones because that’s just how life goes.  Some friends are seasonal and for these you have to know when to let them go and move on.  Humans change throughout the course of their lives because of life changing circumstances, tragedy, happiness, birth, love, marriage, death, accident, school, drugs, career, self-education, media, and so many more things.  When people change it can be for the good or bad.  I know who try so hard to hold onto friends who know longer have purposes in one another lives but just because they’ve been friends for so long.  To be a good friends means knowing when to let someone go one throughout life if you are the friend who drags them down and keeps them growing in life.  Letting go is hard, but at times it’s needed.  It may be the other way around and you have to let someone go because you know longer move forward in life because of this friend or perhaps one another may be keeping each other in a bad place. 

Just with all things in life friends change just as the weather changes, as the season changes, as life changes.  Some friends will be lifelong and some will be for brief short periods of time.  If you lose a friend or someone tells you they no longer wish to be friends don’t be afraid to let them go and flourish on their own.  After-all we don’t stay attached to our parents for life, we learn, we grow, and we go start our own lives because that’s life.