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It has been a while since I mustered
enough motivation to sit in front of my laptop computer and start a new blog
post. If I am not mistaken, I wrote my last article last November 2011. Well,
that’s quite a long time. Today is a boring Sunday; this doesn’t mean I write
when I’m bored. Simply, my thought has already been fed up with a lot of ideas.
I came across with a lot of ideas on
what to write in this blog. I have thought of ESL (English as a Second
Language) teaching, my frustrations, or desires. Arrgghh! Until one friend
asked me how I managed to keep a hundred friends though I was as busy as a bee.
I was not able to answer him, rather, I was busy gathering my thoughts and I
came to realizing one good idea that night – to blog about friends.
Let me start by telling you what
friendship means to me. Friendship is a feeling
of love and affection of one person for another. This feeling of love must be
reciprocated. Otherwise friendship cannot be possible. Friendship does not
exist where tastes, feelings and sentiments are not similar.
You might have a
different interpretation of the word friendship and that would be fine. As they
say, we are individually entitled with our own opinion. However, spare me this
time that I came up with a very shallow definition of it.
I now brag. Yes, I
have a lot of friends. I often ask myself, “How did I make a lot of friends?” I
don’t have certain strategies or techniques. When I talk to people, I will make
it sure they’ll listen. And if I see that they show interest then maybe I could
consider them as good people. Some people say first impression lasts. I
realized this is not true. We need to know more about the person to come up
with a conclusion – “Ah, I had a wrong impression. This person is not what I
knew about him before.” Or “Yeah, I was right! He justified my first
impression!” or “He can be a good friend.”
Now that we have
numerous friends, I now raise a question - are our friends worth keeping? Who
are real and who are not? Apparently,
it hardly comes to anyone’s mind a “true friend”. You are no nearer to true friendship than if you choose them for commercial
reason. Besides who are you that you should be setting a price upon your
friendship? It is enough for any man that he has the divine power of making
friends, and he must leave it to that power of making friends.
Friends are essential in our life just
as food is essential for living. Moreover, it is essential to determine their
friendship as we analyze the contents of the food before we eat. Friends and
their friendship play a great role in everyone’s life. It is a gift that we
offer because we must; to give it as the reward of virtue would be to set a
price upon it, and those who do that have no friendship to give. We would meet
a lot of people in our life, from those we choose friends and among those, we
make our best friend.
It
is said that a friend in need is a friend in deed. There may be many friends at
the time of prosperity. But most of them desert at the time of adversity. We
can examine the sincerity of a friend during our time of hardship and trouble.
Only a sincere and faithful friend remains with us at the time of our trouble.
All others leave us. It is very painful when our friends turn traitors.
Money
is an enemy of friendship. Everybody has an attraction for money. When lending
or borrowing of money is done between two friends, there is great risk.
Friendship may be affected. So it is wise for true friends to avoid monetary
transaction. Vanity is another element which breaks friendship. Everybody has
self-respect. When a person tries to criticize his friend, their friendship is
affected. So friendship must be treated very delicately.
Very
often some hypocrites pretend to be friends. They are more dangerous than
avowed enemies. By telling soft words they bring enormous ruin to us. A true
friend never exploits. He rather surrenders. But at present, the meaning of
friendship has changed.
There
are many fair-weathered friends. They terminate their friendly tie as soon as
their interests are fulfilled. It is very difficult to find a true friend
today. It is better to establish true friendship with either a dog or an
elephant. Both these beasts will remain faithful to their human friends. Today,
friendship between two persons is short-lived.
Good
friends exercise good influence. They always help their friends, in distress
and inspire them to walk on the right path. But evil friends ruin us
completely.
I may have hundreds of friends, but
only a few are true. I may have numerous “tambaymates” but only one or two are
faithful. I may have a lot of audience when I talk but only two or three
listen.
Therefore, not all friends are worth
keeping.
