Friends

There is one piece of wisdom my mum imparted to me which I will never forget.  She used to say, “A friend is one who knows all about you and yet still wants to be your friend.” There is another version of that which I read recently, “You will always be my friend because you know too much about me”.

Some people see the number of ‘friends’ they have on Facebook , Instagram and the like as a measure of their popularity and they often boast of the numbers of so called ‘friends’ they have accumulated.

During our lifetime we can make many acquaintances that we can easily confuse ourselves by calling them friends.  If we’re honest with ourselves, we could probably count our number of real friends on one hand.

Some people choose to have a small number of sincere friends. Others are so busy trying to be who they think their so-called friends want them to be, that they lose touch with who they really are themselves.  Real friends for them can be hard to find.

A real friend is one who will give of themselves and their time without wanting anything in return. It seems, to have a friend, we must first be a friend.  And to keep a friend, we must have the courage to be honest with each other and with ourselves.

So, there’s a friendly reminder. Everyone needs a friend.  So let’s be one!

I’m Peter Mack and that’s life.

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