True friendship is something that is very hard to find and should not be taken for granted. Most people have several acquaintances but not everyone has a true friend. What makes a friend can take many forms. Someone in desperation can believe someone to be a true friend because they are there for them at that time but a true friend is there for them always. They are there for them at their happiest of times and they are there for them at their saddest of times as well. A true friend will stick up for you when you are not around and will never betray the bond that you both have created. It’s hard to find someone who fits all the criteria of a true friend so this is why when you find one, it’s important to hold on because you are the luckiest person in the world.
As children, people develop friends from who they are forced to play with. The limits to which youngsters are allowed to travel when they go out and play, kind of determines who we develop relationships early on because most kids are in the same boat. Every time we go outside we are forced to play with same kids so we tell everyone they are our friends and that’s it. When asked who our best friend is, it’s always the one we play with the most. It doesn’t matter if he or she is black, white, yellow, red, brown or any other color, they are our friend and that’s the way it is.
As we grow a little bit older our friends have grown because our territory has grown larger and we have more and more people to play with. The friends we take with us to explore these new surroundings our naturally the ones who start to become better and better friends with and now we actually have a connection with them and adventures of the few past days we have spent together. We can tell the new people we meet of the things we’ve done together and they can share with us the things they have done. By doing so we can find out what we have in common with new kids and decide who we want to spend more of our time with.
As we grow older still, all those friends that we developed before are now all thrust together into the school environment where they are more kids to choose from than one can imagine. Our friends now are plentiful to choose from and we make even more friends while still keeping hold of the friendships we made before. After school we talk of new friends and experiences and then we start to compare our old friends to new friends we have made and decide who we want to keep in our circle of friends. By this time, our actual friends that we choose to be around thin out a bit and we decide who we are going to spend most of our time with. Old friends are lost and new friends are made, but we still a few of our friends from our past that we hang on to. After all, chances are they still live near to us and we see them we we play outside.
Time goes on and now we have developed relationships that we take with us usually into high school. We are really beginning to know who we are and where we want to be and start to base our friendships off of who we get along best with by determining who we have the most in common with. A kind of political diversity breaks kids up into different clicks based on family wealth, sports, smarts, talents and popularity, which in most cases can be attributed to how well you associate with any of them if not all. At this time, we probably still have at least one friend we have brought with us all this way. They have shared in all of the same highs and lows that we have felt because we did it together and now it’s time for graduation and a brand new part of our lives to begin. This friend or friends are now what we consider to be true friends as they have never left our side. We will refer to them as our best friends from school and they will be the ones we always will refer to when it comes to the days of growing up.
True high school friends compared to finding new ones was easy. We now enter a stage of our lives where we will meet new people and new environments. We are usually too busy to worry about making new friends so those we choose to call friends we base off of our relationships from the past. We look for the same qualities of our best friend and choose to surround ourselves with the people who can relate to us the most. Even now to call someone a true friend is far away. They must still pass a series of test we unconsciously lay upon them and how they do determines the next level of friendship we will have with them. Still through all this time, we still keep in touch with our true high school friends and see how they are doing.
The new people who we are spending our time becomes a series of meeting new people and getting to know who they are and basing our continuing friendship off how we relate to them and whether or not we find it in our best interest to find out more. As we grow older, more and more things bother us about people so it’s harder to find people we can take more than a few hours with. The friends who we have spent the most time with take precedence. We eventually define ourselves by being the best parts of our best friends. We learn from them and continue to experience new things together.
Now it comes time to ask ourselves who we consider our true friends. It’s more than the amount of time we have spent with a certain person although that is a key point. There is no set amount of time that determines who can call a true friend, but rather the amount of time it takes for a person to prove that they will be there for you no matter what. The amount of times that person will prove this point over is the most important part of beginning to call someone a true friend. Case and point, the word that can sum up a true friend is LOYALTY! If one can remain loyal to you and you actually realize it, then hold on to this person. If they are honest with you even when you don’t want to hear it, this is a true sign of friendship. They will always have your best interest in mind. This is the meaning of a true friend.
