Lily Inspired: Friend or Foe?

Feels like it's time for another Lily Inspired entry.

I read a while back on 2 separate occasions articles related to females and their friends. The first was called "Breaking up with your girlfriend" and the other was "Toxic Friendships". I have my 2 cents worth on the topic of gals and their pals.

In life you will meet a lot of people. Some of these people will grow into a stronger attachment and you call them friends. Friends are extremely important. Like a tree, friendship needs time to cultivate. You need to give it water, sunlight, oxygen and ample space to survive (for girls the last point is literal). The friends you make early on in life will grow the deepest roots. These are friends that i consider "childhood friends". And these are the friends you will most likely keep for a long time, if the foundation was set right.

As you get older, the social circle changes. You go into different tertiary education, different workspace, different stages of your life, meet all kinds of other friends... Only the ones who withstand the test of time will keep in touch and be friends for life. It also helps if these friends evolve with you and remain socially relevant. e.g., when u become a mother they become a mother too. I'm not saying you have to be friends with people who are absolutely the same as you are but having common topics to discuss always helps.

To cut the long story short, you'll make all kinds of friends with different levels of depths and relevance. Getting to my point now....

Of all these people that you meet, a few will disappoint you. And you will disappoint a few... Some will make you cry, you will make some cry. These unhappy incidents will get you down, there will be feelings of regret, second guessing, maybe a little anger... But that's okay, it happens. Just don't dwell on to it for too long, just move on with life.


I'm not asking you to be cavalier about friendship. Put your heart and soul in it. But recognize when the friendship is no longer productive, or even worse it's destructive. Put an end to it. Don't be afraid to break up. It's easy to fall into the "pleasing everybody" trap, but "pleasing everybody" is a sign of character weakness, it means that you lack the self-confidence so you need to "please everybody" in order for them to like you. Instead, be nice to your friends because you are sincere. Be reliable because you are accountable to yourself. Be giving because you are generous. Believe that you are a decent human being because i'm going to groom you to be one, i'll make sure of it. You know, the friends who do the "please everybody" act actually end up being the worse friends because once they get you to like them their personality perks disappear. That's when you'll need to banish them.

I once read somewhere that at any one point, you only need 6 friends in your immediate circle to function. So u see, it's not that hard.