Thursday, February 14, 2013

Real Friends Make Life Worth Living...

After family, friends are the ones who care for us. The definition of friends is very subjective from one individual to the next. As we go through the different states of life, we are exposed to various environments and we meet new people. It’s very important to keep good terms with them because having a strong social network helps us grow in life but mind you, the quantity of people you meet will never beat the quality of people you really get to know. Sometimes, we meet people that put us down while others contribute to our well-being. With time, we learn which ones don’t deserve our time and energy and which ones deserve us at our best. In between, we learn to categorize people we meet throughout our life. Let’s have a look at how my world looks like to me.


Having close friends to my heart has always been important to me because they are the ones who believe in me when I cease to believe in myself. Those friends are my “eternal friends” because they accept me for who I am and how I am, which includes my weaknesses and my insecurities. I am not a perfect human being but they see a perfect friend in me despite my flaws. In fact, they are the ones who encourage me to be a good human being and to live life with my beliefs. They also appreciate every little thing I achieve in life and whether it’s a small or big accomplishment, they make me feel as if I’ve conquered the world. They make me appreciate who I have become and make me realize how stronger I am getting at every step I take in life. When they see something negative in me that is being an obstacle in my growth, they make me understand wisely what I need to change in myself and how I can do that without putting me down. My close friends also share their good and bad experiences with me because  we didn’t necessarily have the same journey in life. The good things in their lives have inspired me to believe that good things indeed happen in life and from their bad moments, I learned how I should deal if ever I am put in that situation in the future. At last but not the least, they are friends who make time for me and let me speak my heart and my mind. They are the ones with whom I cherish the little things life has to offer because no matter what are my restrictions in life, they manage to spend quality time with me. So this was my set of “eternal friends”, i.e. friends that are hard to find and as my wise friend once told me “I can count the number of friends on my hand’s fingers”, this surely applies to me also.

My second set of friends are my “well-wisher friends”, slightly larger than the set of my “eternal friends” in terms of quantity. These friends are the ones with whom I got or get to spend limited time because they were or are with me just for a short amount of time in life, for example: school buddies, coworkers, and friends of friends. They have made a positive impact on my life which has helped me look at my future in a brighter way. Some have been there to make me laugh and smile (Yes, I needed and still need friends for this silly reason) and others have impacted me with their wise words or good advices to move forward in life. If things were under my control, I’d have kept these friends in my present but just like how I had to move on to build my future, I had to let them walk on their journey. Nevertheless, my heart’s doors are always open for them and they know who they are. It always makes me happy to bump them anywhere after so many years and I always get the same happy reaction from their side too. So what impact have I made in their lives? That’s tough to answer because I know what they mean to me and only they could answer you about what I mean to them. For now, I think I really made them feel that they are beyond ordinary people. I often encountered people that weren’t aware of some of their abilities and whenever I had the opportunity and time, I didn’t hesitate to share my thoughts on them and I somehow lifted their self-pride. Thus, the bottom line is that my “well-wisher friends” have appreciated me for who I am and for the little things I did to make a difference in their lives.

The last set is the well-known set of just “acquaintances”. I think more than half of people I’ve met fall in that category. It’s not a bad thing and this is in fact a reality of our days: we can’t connect with everyone that we meet in life. Therefore, my acquaintances are just people with which conversations are very limited to “Hi, how are you?” when I happen to see them unexpectedly. Just like I couldn’t contribute anyhow in their road of life, they haven’t either. In other words, nothing much “clicked” between me and them probably because our thoughts differed or we just didn’t have much in common to get closer. As much as I didn’t take the time to know them better, they didn’t either. Basically, it is not in my nature to force people to become a part of my life because I don’t believe in changing others so that they please me as I myself wouldn’t put a fake act to please them temporarily. I think we all have a set of acquaintances. Sometimes we think that they are the “bad” people because it didn’t work out for us with them but they are not the bad people. In fact, they are just people who are not compatible with our personalities and it’s one of the things life teaches us: we can’t always have the best out of everything, so we meet these acquaintances just to learn more about ourselves and truly acknowledge who are our real friends.

In today’s generation, there is a lot of emphasis on socializing and chilling because it’s indeed important to connect with people but I think what’s even more important is that each one of you should have some lifetime friends. When things may not go fine in your life, many will walk away because people around are often attracted only by the happy person you portray to be. Hence, only those who know your real value will stay by your side. When you have real friends around you, it will make it easy for you to remain who you want to be because the biggest challenge in life is to be yourself in a world that is trying to make you like everyone else. The day you feel like the world is not by your side, all that will matter is the friends who cared enough to stay in your life and are with you in the present. With the right friends, you can reach new heights in life and never underestimate what the good friends can bring to you.

Wishing you all a beautiful Happy Valentine’s Day!


2 comments:

  1. Wow Priya! Especially loved your last paragraph :)

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  2. Super cool post. I like how you don't judge the people you don't connect with. Like you said, it doesn't make them bad people or inferior. They probably have more meaningful connections with other people as well. Another great post Priya!

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