WATER BEFORE YOU EAT

How e dey be? 

How are you doing? I hope you're doing fine and that God continues be with you and guide you. 

Welcome to today's gist.  

I recently noticed something that broke my heart. 

It began in December. I have this friend, let's call them 'Kat', who I realized only reaches out to me when they're in need. I don't know how long that's been going but I first became aware of it in December. So this friend can go months and months without ever reaching out to me, and other friends as I recently found out. No calls, no texts, nothing. But the moment they need my help, they immediately call. I can't tell you when it started and how long it's being going on, but I've noticed it on more than one occasion since December which is saying a lot because if in 3 months, I've noticed they only call me when they need my help, that's terrible. While I was thinking about that, I realized that this situation with this friend isn't the only occasion where this is happening to me. I recently started noticing it about another friend too. Of course I asked myself for like 2 seconds "na me be the problem?" But I know it isn't me. 

Well this incident had me thinking and I thought to share with you. You know we live in a world that's slowly conditioning us to believe we should only befriend people we can benefit from. Now that in itself is not bad, the problem comes when your only motive for a friendship is what you can get from the friend.

You see, friendship is ideally a mutualistic relationship, both friends should be able to benefit from each other; love, support, prayers, advice etc. But these days friendships have become parasitic, we're so focused on what we can get from people and we never take time to think of what people can get from us. So when we reach out to a friend, it's because we need their help, but when they need our help and reach out to us, we're unavailable. 

I remember something that happened in my JSS1. There's this girl who was my classmate at the time and met me to start a reading partnership together. Of course I agreed, iron sharpeneth iron after all. It took me a few weeks but I realized that the entirety of our reading time was focused on Maths which was probably the subject I knew better than she did. When it was time to read all the other subjects, she'd run off to read alone. I'm pretty slow in detecting these things so it had been going on for a while before I detected it and of course, the reading 'partnership' ended. 

So as I was confronted again with this parasitic behaviour, I kept wondering why it was always easy to be the receiver than be the giver. And as I thought about this, I came across a post that talked about helping your friends grow and building with them. It ended with something along the lines of 'you must first water the garden you want to eat from' (this is definitely me saying it in my own words). Think of a gardener, they tend to their plants every time and season; when water is no longer naturally available, they resort to other means to artificially get water into the garden for their plants to grow. They do not just plant and expect everything to turn out alright and come back when the plants should be due, they tend to the plants every step of the way from seeding till the time it blooms. 

And that's how our friendships should be, as you draw from your friends, make sure you have something they too can draw from you, the privilege to draw is not your sole prerogative so drop your 'shoulder pad'. As you're quick to leave friends that do not add value to your life, are you also quick to leave friends to whose lives you don't add value? If you aren't, you're a hypocrite ooo, because you're doing the exact thing you're cutting someone off for!

I encourage you to look at your friendships today, evaluate them and find out how you can add value to the lives of your friends as you also draw from them. You're an embodiment of so much virtue, there's absolutely no way you won't find at least one thing you can do to add value to the lives of your friends. And when you find that thing you can do, please do it! Be a friend that gives as well as receives, after all the Bible tells us that it is more blessed to give than to receive. 

Anyway sha, these two parasitic friends I just discovered, how do you think I should go about the friendships? I need advice because I want to just slam the door closed on them but I'm thinking gently closing the doors might work also, abeg suggest wetin you think say I suppose do. I'll be waiting to hear from you in the comments. 

Till next week!

Love,

Achenyo. 

PS. My birthday's in 15 days!