Over my little stay here on Mother Earth, I have come across different people and found friendship in unseemly people and I have also heard this saying multiple times if not a hundred "It's hard to find true friendship in this generation"
Truth is, I am not here to counter the saying but then I can't help to ask, is it true, Or are the people saying it afraid to put in the work?
Who is a friend?
According to my old dictionary, A friend is a person who shares the same feelings of natural liking and understanding, the same interests, etc. but is not closely related
Now this definition helped us understand that friends share the same feelings.
Feelings are sensations of joy, sorrow, hate, etc,*
Who shares the same understanding and interests, but is that always true? But then again there is not always a side to a coin, here is another way to see who a friend can be
A friend is a helper, supporter, adviser, a person showing kindness and understanding and another version says a friend is a companion
A companion is a person who willingly or unwillingly shares the work, pleasures, and worries e.t.c of another*
I will stop here with all the definitions, so I'll ask again, are friendships really terrible? Or have you stopped to ask yourself if you are the one not ready or fit to be a friend?
Friendship is not all about snapping pictures or taking shots with other people just to post on TikTok, or going shopping on a Saturday morning just so you can play skips together, though it's fun, friendship is way beyond that.
Just like in a romantic relationship, you will get hurt, you will experience happiness, you smile and you cry also in friendship, friendship is a sensitive safe space you can create for yourself so that also means you have to be sensible when choosing friends because I am not ignorant of the fact that some people can be a pure wolf, guile and deceitful.
Some people just want to experience just the good parts of friendship, seriously?
Even farmers harvest bad crops with the good ones but that hasn't stopped them from farming.
No man is an island, I was once told, so how do you want to survive without friends? You will be lonely, you can ask Lukas Graham, who was also advised by his mama to get a friend in his song 7 Years Old.
Friendship is not all bad and I can attest to that, I still have my childhood friends of 22 years, of 19 years, some friends of 10 years and still counting, some I met in my university days, 5 years and still counting, the funny thing is we've changed location so many times, but thanks to technology we are still connected, and some we lost contacts at one point but time and chance happened and we reconnected, and no matter how long we see each other, whenever we get to reconnect physically, we talk, laugh, and gist as if we have always been seeing each other. Someone told me just last night that
True friendship will always rekindle no matter how long you see each other.
Friendship is beautiful, but if you are always too careful to create one, then you will be too busy missing out on the beauty, this is life you can never be too careful, but one thing I believe in the world of friendship, is you can never give what you don't have, and you attract your kind.
Friendship is kinda hard work because you will give, sacrifice, build, and be patient. So if you don't have the love to give, or can't show kindness or you don't have the understanding to be patient, how do you want to do it? Your friend is an entirely different person, raised from a completely different background from you, and besides that, people are kind of complicated, you don't even get along with all your siblings who grew up with you, so yes, they can be misunderstanding in friendship, but that doesn't mean you should cut off that relationship. But I'd like to drop these few points
- Friendship is intentional
- Friendship is a two-way thing
- You don't force friendships
- Friendship is not all about you doing the giving, you also get to receive
- Iron sharpens Iron, so you and your friends are supposed to support and carry each other
- If a person feels like a deadlift and you have tried your hardest to carry them, you can drop, this is life.
- The things you do in friendship come naturally, you are not to be forced or coerced to do things you originally don't want to do
And your friend's attitude towards you is a reflection of yours to them
Friendship is a blessing, and if you haven't found one yet that matches your energy, I will advise you to keep trying to be a better version of yourself, it will be a force to attract your kind of person into your life.
At one point or another, we have been friends with someone and after some time, we find out that we are no longer friends with the person or should I say, the friendship died, but is it a natural death? Or a death the cause we don't know. But to all the friends that left your life and those whose life you left, have you done a self-reflection to know its cause, is it you? Or is it just the friendship thing is bad?
Do you miss a friend? What is stopping you from rekindling a friendship you miss? Pride is a factor, I know, but will you let your pride steal your friend?
*What is really stopping you from creating that friendship you always imagine in your head?