Unspecified Thought of the Day!

I think its important to be self aware, so I try to have daily reflections and with my daily reflections, I started to have my unspecified thought of the day : I was thinking of friends and more specifically who my friends are, what it means to be a friend and whether or not I am a good friend.

No one likes to be lectured or preached to and since I have started to feel the touch of mortality, with my teenage years a distant street in the rear view mirror, the feeling of invincibility has started to fade. So with that I'm trying to be more self-reflexive. The more and more I think about it, I can't come to a conclusion to whether or not I'm a good friend. Of course asking your friends is too easy, how many people - forget your actual friends - will actually be honest and say what they really think of you. I feel I have a pretty high standard of who or what I call a friend. I am not a social media, networking whore and don't consider facebook 'friends' to really be friends. Even within my circle of friends, I seem to have different tiers. The Guys and the Family Friends. Both of which I've grown up with, both of which I consider to be extremely close to. But I tend to keep them mutually exclusive of each other. I have no reason why. But I can identify those 2 groups as my real friends.

So now that my real friends are identified, what makes them who they are and what do I consider a 'friend'.   Someone you can communicate with, someone you can trust, someone to rely on, someone that has differences that you can appreciate or someone you have things in common with. I think being friends with people despite differences and often times because of differences is very important and telling. You're able to get those different point of views and obviously it'd be too easy just to be friends with someone exactly like you, and probably even annoying at times and lets face relationships of all kinds should require effort. Not every friend has to have all these qualities but I think its important that I have all these different elements within my groups of friends and is key to any good support group.

Lastly, I have no idea whether or not I am a good friend. I can say I try to be, but I'm sure it doesn't always work out and not everyone I've ever been friends with or just people I've come into contact with that have observed my behaviours with my friends, thinks that. I think historically, I've had ups and downs with all my friends with varying degrees of success. No one likes to admit failures and I think that's part of the reason why it takes so long to finally end off poor relationships - romantic or otherwise. So I think its hard for people to say 'you've been an awful friend and I want no more to do with you'.

I'm going to try to challenge myself to be a better friend to those I currently have and I hope to have those same efforts extended back to me.  The reality is I have enough friends, I'm not looking to add more, but I would never turn my nose up at anyone, however I think a lot of people must feel the same as once you get into and passed university, in my experience at least, it becomes more difficult to make very close friends. So I guess it makes sense to just, enjoy and cherish the ones you have.