Fiends, how many of us have them? Friends one we can depend on. - shout out to Whodini
So I am taking this opportunity to write about friendship. I used to think that a friend was someone you were cool with and overlooked their flaws because you knew them for 'X' amount of years. I was loyal to these people that I met in grade, school, or maybe even high school, because of respect and history.
After a while I began to meet new people and make new friends. (check my facebook and it says that I have over 1300 'friends') Over time I began to see that other people had a different idea of what it meant to be a friend. They had the same idea of what I should be as a friend to them, just not what they should be as a friend to me. Alot of friendships became one sided and I began to develop what I am going to call 'friends of convenience.' These are the people that you interact with out of everyday life. 'Work friends' come into this category.'Neighbors' can even fit in this category. So for a long time I would just interacted with the people who came around, or were around and called them 'friend'. I was broke and didn't want for companionship so this suited me.
I still kept my real friends who I have cultured relationships with overtime and were more like an extended family than friends, I just ran in this mock friend circle for a while. Not that some of the people in the mock friend circle weren't my actual friends, its just that there were a lot of filler people and a lot less people of substance. That is what happens when you party all the time, and you live at the party house. When there are around 30 people at your house on average per week at random intervals you develop a lot of 'buddies'.
Once I moved into my own place I reverted back to being a loner. Did by myself stuff and loved it. Then my brothers moved in with me and I realized that my best friends were my family. People you truly love and care for and have a genuinely good time with all the time. This is not the same for everyone so in this regard I am truly blessed. This helped me out a lot because I started to look for those same qualities in others and began to develop a new classification of friends, 'real friends', I took those friends that have always posessed these characeristics and traits and added them in and left the remaining slots open, anticipating finding others that could fit the criteria.
So I went out and sought new friends. Not that I needed replacements, but I wanted to see if people could fit into the new friend mold I had derived. At first I just found a sea of "fake ass friends'' and 'fair weather friends' waiting to jump on board. But after I waded through the grime for a little while I began to stumble upon genuinely good souls with whom I had been able to develop a kinship with. Since then I have been collecting (not so much collecting but whatever) only these types of friends.
So now that I am enlightened to the type of people I wish to be surrounded by and the types that I truly care to avoid at all costs I have been able to build for myself a position in life where on a daily basis I am engaged in healthy interaction and intellectual stimulation. In the past few months I have stumbled upon some people who are quite similar to myself and I am happy to have made their acquaintance. I also have found that some people that I have known for quite sometime I really never gave a fair chance and some of them have surprised me as well.
The only downfall of this enlightenment comes when I engage in some sort of interaction with a person who is truly ignorant, childish, rude, or selfish. I find that my tolerance of these people has grown thin and I have to continuously remind myself that without these fools I would never have been able to truly appreciate the great people in the world that I am blessed to know.
So I am taking this opportunity to write about friendship. I used to think that a friend was someone you were cool with and overlooked their flaws because you knew them for 'X' amount of years. I was loyal to these people that I met in grade, school, or maybe even high school, because of respect and history.
After a while I began to meet new people and make new friends. (check my facebook and it says that I have over 1300 'friends') Over time I began to see that other people had a different idea of what it meant to be a friend. They had the same idea of what I should be as a friend to them, just not what they should be as a friend to me. Alot of friendships became one sided and I began to develop what I am going to call 'friends of convenience.' These are the people that you interact with out of everyday life. 'Work friends' come into this category.'Neighbors' can even fit in this category. So for a long time I would just interacted with the people who came around, or were around and called them 'friend'. I was broke and didn't want for companionship so this suited me.
I still kept my real friends who I have cultured relationships with overtime and were more like an extended family than friends, I just ran in this mock friend circle for a while. Not that some of the people in the mock friend circle weren't my actual friends, its just that there were a lot of filler people and a lot less people of substance. That is what happens when you party all the time, and you live at the party house. When there are around 30 people at your house on average per week at random intervals you develop a lot of 'buddies'.
Once I moved into my own place I reverted back to being a loner. Did by myself stuff and loved it. Then my brothers moved in with me and I realized that my best friends were my family. People you truly love and care for and have a genuinely good time with all the time. This is not the same for everyone so in this regard I am truly blessed. This helped me out a lot because I started to look for those same qualities in others and began to develop a new classification of friends, 'real friends', I took those friends that have always posessed these characeristics and traits and added them in and left the remaining slots open, anticipating finding others that could fit the criteria.
So I went out and sought new friends. Not that I needed replacements, but I wanted to see if people could fit into the new friend mold I had derived. At first I just found a sea of "fake ass friends'' and 'fair weather friends' waiting to jump on board. But after I waded through the grime for a little while I began to stumble upon genuinely good souls with whom I had been able to develop a kinship with. Since then I have been collecting (not so much collecting but whatever) only these types of friends.
So now that I am enlightened to the type of people I wish to be surrounded by and the types that I truly care to avoid at all costs I have been able to build for myself a position in life where on a daily basis I am engaged in healthy interaction and intellectual stimulation. In the past few months I have stumbled upon some people who are quite similar to myself and I am happy to have made their acquaintance. I also have found that some people that I have known for quite sometime I really never gave a fair chance and some of them have surprised me as well.
The only downfall of this enlightenment comes when I engage in some sort of interaction with a person who is truly ignorant, childish, rude, or selfish. I find that my tolerance of these people has grown thin and I have to continuously remind myself that without these fools I would never have been able to truly appreciate the great people in the world that I am blessed to know.
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