SAVING THE FRIENDSHIP OR THE FRIEND?

I remember reading somewhere: “you can pick your friend but you can't pick your friend’s nose”. Here’s what I understood from that quote – it’s never so easy to judge our friends. This brings me to the title of this post; it’s not easy to critique our friends because that may lead us to that corner where you have to make the difficult/hurtful decision of picking a friend over the friendship with that friend because a real friend cares more about the friend than the friendship with the friend.

Although I’m not a champion great friendships, I think it's important to note that the real beauty of truly great friendships is not the friendship in itself but rather the courage to choose that friend over the friendship. 

For instance, I've been faced multiple times with the choice of having difficult conversations with certain good friends. Conversations that would either save my friend from driving off a cliff (if they see value in what I’d say) or potentially derail and change the nature of our friendship forever (if they don't see value in what I say).

This is where we all take the easy route - avoid the confrontation, say a prayer for our pals, risk nothing and save the friendship. When the right thing to do would be to risk the friendship for the sake of the friend because unless we love our friends more than we love the friendships with these friends, we're only loving ourselves.

Loving our friends so much that we can spill the bitter truth to them gut honestly is so difficult and dangerous because it's costly, uncomfortable and sometimes costs us friendships.

Have you ever lost a friendship because of you didn’t want to lose the friend? If your answer to that question is no, you should have at least come close. If not, chances are that you care more about your friendships than your friends.

Let’s examine ourselves, what have you generally placed more value on through your actions, the friendship or the friend?

Help a friend bloom.