Priceless treasure essay
Answers
Have you ever thought about the significance of friendship? Most likely you have a friend or two in your life right now, perhaps a dozen or more. Do you value them? I mean, do you truly value them?
Many individuals call just about everyone they meet a friend. Does someone you’ve recently met constitute a real friend? I believe that a real friendship takes time to build before being able to be labeled a friendship.
Friends come and go in our lives over the years. Some pass through in the blink of an eye it seems, others hang around a while but fade in time, yet others stick around for the duration of a lifetime. Can these all be called friends?
Friends serve various purposes in our life. Some are there for a short time-frame. Perhaps you and another individual facilitate a project together and develop a rapport for the duration of the project. It pulls you both together for a certain purpose, and through that purpose you become friends. However, once the project is completed and you no longer work together every day, you find you share very little without the project, so you soon go your separate ways. The purpose has been completed. This can happen in any relationship. Once a purpose has been served, the reason for the relationship is over.
Others come into your life and your friendship lasts for some years. Perhaps you live in the same neighborhood and your children play together continuously. You may visit with each other frequently, maybe even daily, and feel inseparable. But suddenly you discover you have to move away. You are both sad but vow to always remain friends, promising to visit each other often. That’s exactly what happens the first few years, but new friends enter into your life in your new place. Your children have grown and have new friends, and you have changed a great deal along the way. One day you realize you haven’t talked with this friend for many months; the friendship has all but slipped away.
Associations enter your life through your workplace. For example, you may remain at a particular job for a decade, so consider those co-workers your friends. One day you move onto a different job after those ten years, thinking the co-workers will always be your friends. Within months however, most, if not all of those so-called friends have lost their commonality with you and the connection is broken.
We attract some individuals into our life through manipulation. There is something to be gained by hanging around with a particular person, perhaps in a personal asepct, or for a business purpose. We “pretend” with a friendship, possibly without even knowing this consciously, because we are so intent on creating this connection in order to receive whatever it is we want. We’ve all been here at some point in our life, using someone for our personal gain. Would you seriously call that friendship?
Then there is the individual who is there no matter what, throughout your entire life, no matter where you live or how much you change. This friend and you have developed a bond that goes beyond the earthly ties of typical friendships. You both understand what it means to be a friend and truly value each other. This friend is a treasure, one of your greatest gifts in this lifetime.