Are They Really Your Friends ?
October 10th, 2006Have you ever wondered if the people you spend your social time with are really the best people you could be hanging around? Did you choose your friends or are they just friends of habit and environment. By this I mean, sometimes we meet people at school or at work or through others we know and they become our friends simply because they are there. These places can be great to meet good friends but can also cause us to get caught in a rut and not move on with our life when the time is right.
During our lives we are all evolving in some way or another. Some people are evolving faster than others and in different directions. This is not to say one person is better than someone else, it simply means we are all following our own unique path. This is because every person who has ever lived, lives now or will ever live is unique in some way. No two people are ever the same. Each individual is shaped by their own unique set of experiences.
At school age we tend to form most of our early friendships with the other kids we go to school with or kids of a similar age living in the same neighborhood. These friendships may last for our entire lives but often as we get older these friendships simply fade as we move away from the area we grew up in or we take differing directions in life. The same goes for work friends who we meet on the job and automatically have something in common due to working in the same place. We often then go on to form friendships with other friends of our work friends who socialize in the same circles and so on. But what happens when one of you starts to grow apart from the rest for whatever reason?
I remember quite a few years back I had a friend I met through work who I started to spend some of my social time with and he was a great guy. We would go to watch live football games together and we both enjoyed fishing. He seemed to be on the same wavelength as me and we became good friends. His girlfriend became friends with my girlfriend at the time and the four of us always had fun when we were out together. After a couple of years we no longer worked together but would still see each other fairly regularly, probably around once a month or so.
One night quite late he turned up on my doorstep and repeatedly kept ringing on my doorbell. My girlfriend and I were asleep and I remember that at the time I thought there had been some sort of accident out the front of my house as I rushed to the front door. It was my friend, he was very drunk and wanted to come inside. So I let him in and he went on to explain how he was out with some other friends of his and had gotten in a fight. This shocked me as he was definitely not the sort of guy to get in a fight, but went on to say his other friends were involved and he just happened to get involved. On top of all this he had just recently broken up with his girlfriend and I got the feeling he was quite lonely. He stayed at my place overnight and we decided we would talk more about this when he was sober.
The next day he was extremely apologetic for coming over so late and thanked me for my kindness. From this moment I felt our friendship was still strong and I really wasn’t upset with him at all. We all fall over sometimes and need a little help from our friends. Unfortunately however this was the beginning of the end of our friendship and I was completely unaware of it.
The following weekend I received a call from my friend asking me if I wanted to come over to his house so I did. When I arrived my friend introduced me to some of his new friends. They seemed like cool guys and I felt comfortable being there. As the day became night the place started to get pretty rowdy so I decided to go home. Later that night my friend called me back and demanded I come back to what had turned into a party, I declined and he was quite upset but figured he was drunk again so no big deal.
Over the next few months I saw my friend on the odd occasion but he was becoming someone I really didn’t feel comfortable being around. He could sense this tension between us and invited me on a fishing trip with him to a place we had had some great trips and caught many fish before. I decided to go for two reasons, one was I loved this particular fishing spot and two, I was hoping we could put the friction in our friendship behind us. I knew he had become friends with some very wild guys I wasn’t interested in hanging out with but I didn’t really care about that and certainly wasn’t judging him by who else he was friends with. We had been friends for a long time and I hoped we could still continue to be.
We went on our fishing trip and the fishing part of the trip was ok but I knew as far as I was concerned, this was someone I no longer wanted to associate with. He had become so negative and angry he didn’t at all seem like the guy I used to know. After we got back from our trip, in the following weeks, he called me many times but I gave him excuses why I didn’t have time to catch up. Within a month or so he never called again. I felt really bad about this at the time but now I don’t. The reason is because I was evolving in another direction to him. I was following my own path that felt right to me and he was following his own separate path which is perfectly ok.
Friends come and go, that is the nature of our lives. Don’t beat yourself up over losing friends if they no longer make you feel good about yourself and consider the feelings of others if you sense you may be a bad influence or perhaps the wrong type of influence on somebody in particular. I believe in many things of a spiritual nature and try to follow the Universal laws or principles as much as I can because that is what I believe in but it’s not my place to force what I believe in onto someone else because they have the same right as me to believe in whatever they want. The fact that everyone is different is what makes the world such an exciting place to be. You can learn many things from different people but they don’t have to all be your friends.
Making new friends and remaining in friendships should be an effortless procedure. If you have to force yourself to be friends or your old friendships just don’t feel right any more that is a sign to move on and this way you’ll make time for new friendships to form in there own perfect time. Choosing friends who make you feel good about yourself in a way that you know is true will help raise your internal vibration and in turn lead you to a happier life. Listen to your feelings, they will never let you down.
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