Will The Real “Best Friend” Please Stand Up?

Despite this enlightenment sinking into me a couple of years ago, after some thorough examination of my own life, I have to shamelessly admit that I don’t really think I have been a true friend to anyone of the people I call my ‘friends’. Notice I did not take the ‘recipient’ perspective and sympathize for myself over the lack of a true friend in my life. I have realized that in order to care for someone and be ‘true’ to them, I need to love them first, unconditionally. And this I have not yet learnt to do. Friendship’s first action must be ‘initiative’ not ‘response’. If I cared, I would – it was that simple. Again, I’m not saying that I don’t have good friends. I have great ones and I’m sure many of the first ones to read this article will be some of my good friends. But is there anyone out there, amongst my own friends, who I have been true to? Sadly I am unable to answer that with certainty. I can only hope I have. I am still trying…

Brother from another mother

I heard a quote from a movie where one of the characters called his best friend ‘my brother from another mother’. I just had to smile. A clever way of describing the ‘tightness’ of their relationship, I thought. Rhetorical question – do we have a friend we can consider like a brother or a sister? The Bible says that a friend is closer than a brother.  I have pondered over that statement for many years now. How could that possibly be? I know I love my brother more than I did any of my friends. The comparison itself seemed ludicrous. And then I realized I was looking at it the other way around. A good friend should be as ‘tight’ as a brother – accept me regardless of my temperaments, my mood swings, my unreliability, someone who just plain refuses to give up on me, simply because he cares too much to do so.

Friends are the greatest commodity a person can have. Not just the ones that hang around you for a good laugh. But the ones who will stick by you like a leech, even when the going gets tough and you’re in dire straits. Look around you, the people you spend the most time with, the person you talk to the most on the phone, the first person you think about when you want to share something beautiful or need at a time of sorrow. If he or she is your best friend, hold onto them with everything you have. That person might very well be the last best person on this earth for you. Such are a rare commodity, one you cannot afford to let go off, one whose price just might be worth your life. A good test to know would be this – if by the time you finish reading this, you have a face or a name that fit the parameters above, you can consider yourself one of the luckiest persons on the planet!