True friendships - how do they form and how do you keep them?
I remember one of my favorite books - The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The conversation between the little prince and the fox is for me one of the most beautiful in the whole book. A friendship develops between the little prince and the fox, but first, he must tame the fox, so they become unique to each other. The fox tells him his secret: "What is important is invisible to the eye."
We would love to have true friends around us, but have we ever thought about what such a true friendship requires? I remember a short song, that says, "Friendship is like a golden gate, only in us is the key to that gate." Friends, like flowers, need our care. In a relationship of friends, it is important to listen to the other, to give them space to express themselves. At the same time, any relationship is always about both people. We don't choose our friends on our own, but neither do they begin to be friends with us without our active participation.
They say, in need, you meet a friend. Can we be friends in times of trouble? When someone is doing well, he has many people around him who call themselves his friends. But few of them are true friends.
Even if we don't see each other right now, I know they're there for me. Real friends are the ones who carry us through life. It's good to appreciate them and not take them for granted. What can we give to others that is more valuable than our time together? Sometimes we need to talk, to support each other, other times we can use the time for a common hobby - like singing with a guitar or playing sports. We just need to find what is close to both of us, what we can agree on... As I mentioned before, sometimes we have little time, it can be because we are busy with work or our own family, but let's try to find time for our friends. It may be just talking on the phone or sending a message, even if that is a signal that we are thinking of them and want to stay in touch.
You ask, "Where can I find true friends?" Then you may be surprised to know that you can find them anywhere. Even in a work environment, we can meet true friends. However, I believe that due to the busy and sometimes competitive environment, finding friends at work is more difficult. Yet it is not impossible. It depends on who we run into. Speaking for myself, I can say that both at work and at school it was really harder for me to find friends. I think it was mainly due to the role I got into and couldn't get out of it. Yet my real friends include a classmate from primary school, we have known each other for many years and want to stay in touch.
For true friendship, distance means nothing, even if we move, we still want to know about each other and visit each other to the best of our ability.
Often we are on the same wavelength as our true friends, we understand each other without words, and we even sense when there is "something going on" with our friends even if we don't see each other, we just feel it. It's almost unbelievable how connected we can be sometimes.
Time passes faster with friends, it's not like waiting endlessly in a bank, for example. They experience important moments in our lives with us.
If we want to maintain a true friendship, we need to accept each other as they are and not try to change them to suit ourselves. This is also true in a relationship. At the same time, it is important to be honest in a relationship, so to speak, not to "throw honey around"; a true friendship can withstand a quarrel or an exchange of views. A friend even says things that are not nice to listen to, if he perceives that it is necessary. He can help "open our eyes", and bring us back to our path...
People change and evolve over the years, true friends can still see the original face they have come to know and love. Even in a difficult illness they can hold us up and stay with us.
I wish for all of us not to be surrounded by a bunch of friends, but to have a few real ones around us.
