Right now, you might have a lot of friends or maybe just a few friends. Even if you have no friends, the following will apply to you in the years ahead.
You truly will probably have only three real friends in your life at the most. By friend, of course, I mean a truly close friend, the kind of person you can really open up to without fear of ridicule or judgment and the kind of person who will be there in a serious situation. If there is a death in your family or you get stranded on a snowy highway at 3:00 one morning, you know you can count on this friend for support, physical, moral and any other way it's needed.
Throughout high school and college, you will most likely have a lot of "friends." However, most of these people will be friends because you are sharing the common experience of going to high school or postsecondary education.
You will be told in college or university that this is the place where you will form all kinds of lasting friendships and connections with schoolmates that will come in handy for networking in the future. While I am sure this is true for some alumnai, through personal experience and that of people from college I talk with on occasion, I have found this to be a crock. I and others of my classmates tend to have one or two people we keep in regular contact with. I don't do Facebook but people I knew in college who do maybe have a few more of our schoolmates as "friends" on there. The majority of the people we were in class with we don't correspond with anymore.
One reason true friends are so hard to find is because most people only care about themselves and what they're interested in. Therefore, a lot of people who claim to be your friends will just use you for what they can get from you.
Another reason is simply that as people move on from university or college, they advance in their careers, marry and have children. Thus, they get busy with the lives they've carved out for themselves and don't have time to keep in touch with people they knew in high school or university anymore.
I'm not trying to be depressing here. Throughout your life, you'll have buddies, people who share similar interests and are in the same clubs or social circles as you. These people will be a source of great times and may even provide some of the qualities a true friend exhibits. You'll also have acquaintances, people such as co-workers you'll get along with, perhaps even really well. However, I must reiterate, in an age where social networking has caused society to throw this word around, you'll likely only have a few true friends.
2 comments:
Be assured that I consider our growing friendship to be a great blessing from our Heavenly Father. For I have been asking (begging, actually) Him to send me someone who knew His voice and wanted to listen to it to help me whenever I was struggling with something, and now I have you.
On the other hand, you are a Canadian, but beggars can't be choosers, I suppose. (LOL?)
Likewise, Jerry. The feeling is mutual. Our phone calls the past few weeks have been some definite highlights in my life as a Christian.
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