Being a Friend

     What is the difference between being friends WITH everyone and being a friend TO everyone? This question has been on my mind for the past week, and I want to share with you what I have discovered.
 
     Last semester, I really struggled with making friends. For the first time in my life, I felt shy in a way. I didn't think anyone would want to be my friend and so I was scared to reach out to others. At the beginning of April, I had one particular friend who confided in me. We were quite close and I even told him about the struggles I was having socially. He completely understood what I was saying! We were able to talk about friendship and how it's nice to have people you can rely on. I left that conversation happy knowing that I had such a good friend in him. Unfortunately, that was the last real conversation that we had. I'd invite him to hang out and he would never respond. I'd see him around and he would avoid eye contact. HOW RUDE?! That's what I would scream in my head whenever I saw him.

    That little anecdote is practically the epitome of how I felt my social life was going. Friends not acting like friends. Or losing contact with people who I thought cared about me as much as I cared for them. The whole semester was spent thinking about how people were treating ME. How nobody wanted to be friends with ME. What was wrong with ME? I'll tell you what was wrong with me... I was too focused on myself. I wanted to be friends with all these different people. I wanted people to care about me and like me. But all that time that was spent worrying about myself was time wasted. Just because I wasn't friends WITH everyone, doesn't mean that I couldn't have been a friend TO everyone.

     Being kind to someone takes very little effort. Letting someone know that you are there for them takes very little effort. You don't have to agree with someone's political, religious, or philosophical views in order to appreciate them as a person. You don't need to share the same interests or listen to the same music in order to care about or treat someone with respect and love. A person doesn't even have to like you for you to be a friend to them. We each have the ability to reach out and be a friend to all those with whom we interact. We each have the power to have a positive impact on those that surround us. So what is stopping us?

     My insecurities were stopping me, but then I stopped and realized that it shouldn't have been about me. Friendship is not about what other people can do for us; it's about what we can do for other people. Whenever you feel unwanted or unneeded, STOP IT! You are wanted and YOU ARE NEEDED, because your friendship could make a huge difference. This is something that I am really striving to work on because I am by no means great at it. Despite my lack of perfection in this area, I feel comfortable in saying that I am happier when applying this concept. Some questions that I've found helpful are:

1) Who can I be a friend to?

2) How can I be a friend to them?

3) Who haven't I been a friend to?

4) Why haven't I been a friend to them?

5) What can I do to start treating them like a friend?

     If you find yourself in a social rut like I was, try changing your perspective. It has made all the difference in my life, and I couldn't be more grateful.