FRIENDSHIPS, TREASURES

 Hey😁😁. Welcome to today's gist!

Today's discussion is on a subject very close to my heart, valuing friendships. 

They say no man is an island and that's so true. We need to have other people in our lives and one such category of people we need to have are friends. The interesting thing about friendships is the fact that we are at liberty to choose who our friends are. But I'm not going to be talking about choosing friends today, I'm going to be talking about valuing the friends we have. 

Too many times we hear people use the stability they enjoy in their friendships as an excuse to misbehave in the friendship, you'll hear things like "we can always pick up where we left off" but how about not leaving off at all. So because you know your friend will always be there for you and never go away, you decide to "move mad" in the friendship! 

Like every other human relationship, friendships need to be nurtured to grow, I believe when you don't nurture your friendship, you kill it slowly.  We have friends that we know we can do anything, literally anything, and they won't leave, they'll always be there picking up behind us as we move about putting ourselves in trouble, be the listening ear whenever we need, give us advice we may or may not end up taking yet still be there to help us weave through trouble we got ourselves into by not following their advice. Personally, I feel that these are the friends we should treasure! Treat like the gems they are. But in most situations, these are the friends we end up disrespecting after all, "familiarity" they say "breeds contempt." But I think familiarity should breed respect. There are friends that I value all the more for the fact that we've been friends for as long as we have.  It’s very easy to give in to the temptation of saying “they’ll understand” and use that as a license to disrespect such friends,most times they won’t do anything: you could keep being absolutely obnoxious to them and they’ll keep taking it, until one day they just wouldn’t. How do I know? I recently was such friend. Now I had this friend with whom I’ve been friends for about my entire life: we went to Primary School together and we’ve been friends ever since. As we got older, I began to notice that he had began to make disrespect for me a norm in our relationship, it started like play oo –little words smacking of disrespect, disregard and disdain for my opinions, veiled –and not so veiled insults…. I used to just take it in stride until one day he embarrassed me in public. No be just the embarrassment na im pain me, it was the fact that he assumed I would be okay with it because we’d been friends for about 20 years, and the disrespect was business as usual. And of course, I was no longer having it so I simply back-pedaled and left the friendship for him. And as I’ve thought back to that incident and our friendship, I realized something: the thought that I’d always been there and the assumption we both had that I’ll always be there made him very lazy about valuing our friendship. I, on the other hand, could only take so much before finally bidding the friendship goodbye. And I know I am not the only one like this, so rather than risk finding out if your friendship will survive your disregard, it is better to value the friendship and the friend and prevent an unnecessary loss of the friendship: keep in touch, celebrate special days with them, send them random texts and check in with them, make a point to be in their lives in more than just words, let your love for them show truly; nurture your friendships and watch them thrive!

Well, that’s all my two Kobo on this matter, I hope you learn a thing or two. 

See you next week!

Love, 

Achenyo.