This I Believe
I believe the most powerful weapon in the world is the power of friendship. I would be lost without my friends. My mother once told me, “Love thyself, but love your friends and enemies a little more”. I have lived my life trying to adhere by her suggestion, and I feel as if I have done so with great success. Friends come in many different shapes and sizes, colors; they have different attitudes that make them who they are, and seem to arrive in our laps very unexpectedly.
Take my examples: Growing up on a lonely street without a neighborhood full of kids running around was difficult for the first years of my childhood. It wasn’t until I started Kindergarten that I met “the boy across the street”. Evan, as he became known to me, was my age and just happened to be in my class. To make a thirteen year story extremely short, our friendship blossomed as we grew into our teens. Later, as adolescence sprouted from our veins, our relationship deteriorated into our different cliques and various new beginnings. It wasn’t until about three years ago, that I called Evan on his birthday. I now live eight hundred miles away from his childhood home, but I could still picture it in the lost spaces of my mind. He was shocked that I had remembered his special occasion, and his telephone number which I had dialed endless times over summers and winter snowfalls. This story was to show that friends are never forgotten. They become lost and separated for a time, but they are always around if you can take the time to mend that bond of friendship and find them again.
I also believe that friends happen for a reason. When I moved from my small town in upstate New York, to the big city in Virginia, I left everyone in my life I was familiar with; my family, my schools, and my friends of course. I think of myself as a pretty outgoing individual. I am not afraid to approach people and perhaps ask how they are doing or what the time may be. Moving so far away from home was not only culturally shocking, but nerve wrecking as well. It wasn’t until about five months after I started getting slightly comfortable, that I met who I would like to now call my best friend. Heather and I have an inseparable bond, even though our ages vary greatly, and our lives are completely different. If Heather wouldn’t have climbed into my life and made the first move as I should have, I might have been a recluse writing this essay to you now.
Friends are so important in my life. I have found them to be a shoulder to cry on, good for a well needed laugh, and support in my daily endeavors. Do you have friends? If not, you should.