Friendship

“Little friends may prove great friends.”

~ Aesop

I love this quote. Love it. I ran across it today looking for a quote to get tattooed on the outside of my right forearm. It grabbed my attention because it’s so true. My boss recently told me that he was so glad that I had a good group of friends and how blessed I am to have these people in my life who care about me and like to hang out with me. And it is definitely true. I cried in front of six or seven of my friends a couple weeks ago and didn’t feel judged or ridiculed. I am blessed with a great lot of friends.

However, this past weekend, it became quite apparent that sometimes having too many friends just creates a more stressful life and environment. It’s important to remember that you can only nurture a certain number of close relationships and it is very crucial to your sanity to remember not to take people at face value no matter how well you “know” them. It is not easy to know how someone you haven’t known for a while is going to react in certain situations. If four or five people are close to each other and to you, then you’re probably golden.

I’m close to quite a bit more than four or five people. And have hundreds of friends – no exaggeration. I am twenty-three, but it really took me another lesson in friendship to realize that even people you are attached to may be people you shouldn’t have in your life as more than acquaintances. And with that, I have had to learn that I need to not “weed out” my friends, but pull away from some and be more careful before diving head first into relationships with people who should be held at arm’s length before fully devoting myself to nurturing our friendship.

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Sidebar (at the bottom):

It’s funny that this quote stood out to me because it reads “little friends” which obviously is not supposed to mean “small friends.”