Our Circle of friends -must watch your own aspirations and dreams

‘I am just sitting at our favorite
place and you know, what I am missing for this place is it reminds me of
you, said an old friend of mine over the phone. I smiled like a half moon would do
in the night sky and replied ‘say my hello to that place  and
make a promise that we both will be coming soon. An important quality that a
friend should possess is ‘remembering you in his/her good times because if
remembering is meant only for the times of despair then trust me, a person needs
a counselor & not a friend ’. Definitely, a friend in need is a
friend indeed but that should be an inherent quality and not something that you
look for. Through this article, my idea will be to make you understand the
importance of a good circle of friends and how it can make or break your life.

I’ll share a short excerpt of my life and how it changed my approach towards life. In my college days, I used to have some friends to hang out with, & to share my college days with. As the semesters went by, I felt that I was not able to focus much on developing my personality. All this happened because I was focusing more on executing their plans rather than focusing on myself. Let me engage you in another story: you remember when two frogs, mistakenly, fell into the well. They were trying really hard to jump out, while other frogs were shouting, ‘you can’t come out, it’s very deep, and our prayers are with you. Listening to this, one of the frogs actually lost the will to try harder while the other one didn’t. The former frog died in the well while the latter one successfully jumped out as the latter one was deaf. You know the lesson here: deafness to what people expect out of you always adds an extra point to your personality. Something similar was my case when I actually started acting deaf to what was expected out of me.  And trust me, I actually jumped out from the well of expectations whereby I decided to focus more on what I wanted to do rather than just being a useless part of groups. I changed my circle of friends upside down and accordingly my approach toward life changed. It was at this time that I started improving my semester grades started new things, bettered myself in my interested areas, and most importantly gave a deep thought about my career (i.e. IAS or Engineering). Ultimately, at every point of your life, you got to delete people so as to focus on yourself else, in the near future, regret will make you hate yourself.

I know I may be sounding rude in a way that, ‘who is she to tell us about the kind of friends we must choose?’ You are absolutely right, this article represents my thoughts for those people who wish to improve their personalities, others can please switch the tab. Now, you must be thinking that,’ how will we know whether to change our circle of friends and even if we know, won’t it hurt our friends, leaving them just like that ?’ don’t worry, I’ll give some hints about it. Following are some of the hints that I can think of as of now.

1.     You have not gained any knowledge regarding worldly affairs in the last 6 months or so.

2.    You have no hobbies or interests other than partying out almost every day.

3.    You have worked zero for your body in the last 6 months or so.

4.    You have no clarity about what you aspire to do, at least for the next 2-3 years.

5.    You know your weaknesses but you haven’t started working on them.

These hints should be enough to signal you about the right path and know that letting go of people is a positive quality. Now, enough of what to ignore, let us also talk about what to look for. Remember, I talked of an old friend who called me, sitting at the place we visit most, I look for such kind of friends. A circle of friends should consist of friends who:

1.     Inspires you to work harder & smarter w.r.t your career, family, personality, etc.

2.    Helps you in exploring unexplored aspects of life like music, social issues, etc.

3.    Makes your mood light when you are in stress via talking, partying, etc.

4.    Knows the importance of having a personal space in a friendship.

5.    Calls you in both happy & sad times.

And how do you get such kind of a circle? You got to invest in it like you do in any other activity. You have to understand your friend and treat him as per his/her mindset and not yours. When you talk/listen to your friend as per his/her condition and not yours, you actually make your friendship stronger. You got to plan some small trips with them, guide them in their personal struggles, and do anything else which makes his/her life more worthy than before. I hope I have made my thoughts clear via this article.

We are always a product of our circle of friends and thus choosing it is an important aspect of the future path of our life. You may be a glass of clean water but a single spoon of sand can change the taste and texture of that clean water. You got to protect your glass of clean water.

Thomas Jefferson expressed very rightly, “Friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.”

In these times, set your priorities right.

Stay safe, Take care.

~SRILAKSHMI THATHA