Friends

I am sure a politician’s favorite saying is, “You can never have too many friends.” In a sense I can agree with that, but there is another saying which also rings true of the politician, “With friends like you, who needs enemies.” I know there are some who really want to help, but let’s be honest, how many more laws do we really need, especially when we can’t fully police the laws we already have. Then you have the lawyers in our legal system who have twisted things to unrecognizable understandings by anyone. Sorry, had to vent.

I am blessed to know quite a few people, and most of them I can call my friend to one degree or another. How many true friends do I have, who are actually concerned about me, I don’t know. I know I have a few, but last Sunday I was blessed with finding out I have one more.
Without going into boring details, I will just say last weekend wasn’t a good weekend for me. Normally I can put on a good face when I am around others, but Sunday, I just didn’t care. Oh, I tried since it was Mother’s Day, but my heart wasn’t in it. When I got to church everyone asks the normal question about how things are going, and I gave my normal answer when things aren’t going very good, by saying “It’s just another day in paradise.” This translates to not worth a s..t.

This works out fine, because I learned a long time ago, most people really only want you to tell them everything is fine, because they don’t want to have to take the time to listen to your problems. They have enough problems of their own, and have no desire to hear about any more. There’s a small part of me that does understand, but only a small part for when they have a problem I am usually lucky enough to hear all about it, but once I have listened, and offered my encouragement, their off and running again, forgetting I understood their problem, because I am going through the same thing myself, but they don’t want to hear about that.

I know some of you are probably saying, “Well if they won’t listen to you when you have a problem, don’t listen to them when they have a problem.” It sounds good in theory, and I tried it once a long time ago back in school. I ended up having teachers tell my parents, I wasn’t very helpful any more, and had a bad attitude. I had to learn the hard way that once you’re labeled a nice guy, you’re cursed to always be the nice guy. I don’t mean to sound cynical, for I have been able to meet some really interesting people because they felt safe to talk with me.

Back to my friend. I called him one and would gladly help him out whenever he needed it, but I will be honest, I didn’t know if it was a two way street. I have learned the hard way you just never know. Out of all of the people I met a church who asked me how I was, he took the time to see through the smoke screen, and asked me about it repeatedly.

Hear was my chance to finally talk about my problems with someone who would listen to me, and guess what happened? I found I didn’t really have anything to say. My problems weren’t anything anyone could fix, or that needed to be fixed. Just the thought of having someone who was truly willing to listen to me, encouraged me, and that was all I needed. It was just nice to be noticed.

With the hustle and bustle of life which keeps increasing with every passing minute of the clock, it seems to be getting harder and harder to get noticed by others. To get noticed by others it seems you have to really stand out, one way or another, and a lot of the ways people are trying to stand out aren’t healthy. I wonder if we would have all of the problems in the world today, if we would all just take a minute to truly notice someone each day. To ask someone how they are doing, and to go the extra mile to make sure they really are fine. My advice is to start with at least one person a day, and grow it to as many people as you can, and watch the world brighten around you each and every day. My world was truly brightened, because one person went the mile to show they really cared.