What is a good friend?

This is a topic I wanted to speak about for a long time since it is personally dear to me. My friends have always played a huge role in my life, but my definition of friendship also changed and shifted over the time. The concept of a friend is very familiar to every single one of us and one can hardly imagine a person, who has never had at least one friend in their entire life. But there is a sweet spot, where people, who just simply are in your life turn into someone, who are a part of your life.

The first community unit, that a young person gets introduced to, is a family. Family is a completely separate topic, which I might dare to speak about on some other occasion. Since most of us live in big cities, we don’t really get to experience the feeling of an extended community, and the saying “it takes a village” has completely lost it’s meaning. Most of us city kids associate our first moments of socializing with other kids in the neighbourhood – just kicking it on the playground, running around parks and playing all types of games. The next big arena for friendships to develop is school – that is where all the drama begins and the youth gets confronted with a lot of adult topics.

Now one might say a lot about the current educational system, but it is one of the greatest controlled environments to observe human behaviour and socializing. It is like a small model of a city community, where everybody kind of knows each other and are stuck in the same situation with everyone else, but will refuse to admit for a second that maybe, we share a lot more in common, than we think. From what I have observed, up until this point we practically don’t have a lot of choice about who we spend our time with and who we get to call our friends. Those choices are essentially predefined for us by our interests, background, looks, social status and financial situation. Even though one might feel like from a classroom full of kids you made your conscious choice about whom you wanted to spend your school breaks with, the factors that I listed previously essentially decided that for you.

So, if we forget to question everything and do not focus too much on the topic of free will, here you are, a young adult, with people, who have been in your life for years and theoretically know everything there is to know about you and then the most interesting thing happens – you grow apart. You start seeing each other less and less until one day those people become strangers to you and you have nothing to talk about. There is some negative narrative in the culture surrounding this topic, which I do not necessarily agree with. Moving on in life and finding new people to hang out with doesn’t mean that the old friends were not good enough. It simply means that your needs have changed and maybe simply hanging out around the park does not feed your soul anymore like it used to. Maybe you want to talk about theatre, maybe you want to go rock climbing together or maybe you are just over your emo-phase. Accepting the reality and letting go is part of becoming an adult and emotionally mature.

Choosing your friends wisely as an adult is one of the greatest advices I have every received and the arguments for that are pretty obvious – you become that, what you surround yourself with. Actually taking the time to know yourself better and establishing your values will not only help you succeed in life as an individual – it will also become your guide in finding like-minded people and building friendships with them. Every relationship in life is a two-way street and before you receive something, you have to ask yourself – what can I give in return? Loving yourself first and making sure that you are living according to your values will make you a good friend and automatically attract people who appreciate that. Simply living your truth and leading by a positive example is inspiring and is enough to call yourself a decent friend. Treating people with patience and kindness will make you an exceptional one.

Be the person you would like to share your life with.

Love, Faja