Friends, The Actual Sweet And Sour Part of Our Lives.

In our past or current life, we are surrounded by friends and whatever phase we are in, they will always be there, old or new. They stir all kinds of emotions in us that changes our lives for better or worse.  I always wondered how boring life would be without them.

We begin making friends since childhood. Children are mainly known to make imaginary friends especially if the child has no siblings or is encountering some bullying or ridicule from other children. As we grow up, we start placing value in our friends. There are those we want to keep forever and there are those we have for convenient reasons. If they stay on, good enough but if they don't, we quickly forget about them and move on.

In high school the bond between friends is tighter as our energies are not much divided.  That changes in college as our priorities change. We become more adventurous and do not want to be tied too much to our old friends. We want to discover more and that’s is when we get serious with that boyfriend or girlfriend we ignored or teased in high school as we are now confident in our approach.  A lot of mistakes are made at this stage in regards to the friends we keep but there are those who emerge “winners”.  By “winners” I mean they don’t fade away even after we finish college and move on.

As we enter into our career lives, we tend to loose most of our friends as our time becomes more occupied by our jobs. The “winners” will still contact us every so often but we still end up acquiring new friends mainly from our job environment. This is also the stage where the virtual or “internet” friends are made.  The “internet” friends are “spicier” as we can talk about anything with them, comment on their updates or tweet them without necessarily meeting them in person. We often forget about them while offline but nonetheless they make our lives interesting every time we encounter them.

Yes, friends come into our lives for a reason, am talking about those that change our lives in the most amazing and fulfilling way. They wear the phrase 'God sent' so well. They are like an alarm clock in our lives that give us that 'wake up' call we so much needed. They motivate, support, inspire, encourage, boost and give us a lift towards our potential. They make us wonder how much quality our lives would have held if we had met them earlier in life. When they come into our lives, we feel the difference, more like an intake of fresh breath after having lived in a highly polluted area.

Am also talking about friends who are always there to challenge most of what we do or say. These are to be kept even closer as they give us some kind of motivation that is rarely derived from our normal friends.  They always make us want to proof them otherwise even when we know we do not have to. They are very blunt in the way they express themselves to us and are often known to make us want to punch them in their faces. And when we look back and see what they made us accomplish just by sucking up to them, we smile and say to ourselves, yes I needed that.