Your Friend Pool

Many people have a lot of friends. Friends come and friends go. This is a fact of life. For me, I see friends like those at a pool party. You have the ones who are showing off, doing flips off of the diving board, others are just hanging out quietly by the steps and others still are floating around waiting for something "cool"to just happen. Today's post is just designed to get you thinking about what friends are in your "life pool."  

When I look at my friends with the "pool" perspective, I think of several different things. We can all agree that having friends, to what ever degree of their friendship, IS a good thing. Having someone to rattle off complaints about the day or to just laugh with is golden. Having someone with whom you can cry and show your true colors though is priceless. I am fortunate to have always had a lot of friends. Granted the majority of them haven't always been close friends, but friends just the same. Think of it this way: If you were in an actual pool and you began to drown, do you know certain people that would come to your rescue?? Sure you do!! Now, do you know people that would just sit by and hope you were okay? Yep, you know those folks too. Now, do you know people in your "pool" that would have never let you begin to drown in the first place?  If you do, you are among a very blessed percentage of people who have a true best friend. 

This quote above is a bit extreme and not truthful in all legal actuality but it does serve the purpose and make a great point. If you were about to drown, THAT person would grab you before you do. True friend no doubt. Looking at my life pool I can section it out into several different groups. I have folks I know who are more acquaintance types whom I will keep up with but not really do more than that. I also have folks that I am a bit closer to that I will communicate with quite often via Facebook, text or email. There are still others that I know I can count on to hear me whine, who will share important things with me, and those with whom I know my secrets will be safe. All of these listed are important to me and fulfill different needs in my life. I hope that is reciprocal. Surveys have said for years that if the average Joe has 2 lifelong best friends, they are in the minority and that most people seldom have one!! This shocks me, but at the same time I kind of get it. I have had 3 people whom I have known intimately for over 30 years now. I trust them with my confidence, my good and bad times and with my life itself. For them I would rope the moon and even give my life to protect them. These are best friends that I can always trust to be honest with me and not candy coat things just to appease me. 

In my life pool I have quite the diverse mix of people. I have sound engineers, radio personalities, authors, musicians, writers, teachers, pastors, counselors, stay at home moms and dads, mechanical engineers, janitors, politicians, foreign ambassadors, mechanics, school bus drivers, comedians.........you name it. I have been fortunate in many many ways to have experienced so much in my life that has allowed me the opportunity to meet all of these people. A while back, I went through my friends list on Facebook and did some cleaning out as it were. People with whom I rarely communicated and those who rarely did the same with me, people who really didn't pay attention to anything I had been doing or was involved in, I let go. I encourage anyone to do this from time to time. People come and go as I already stated. We all know this. Why does this happen? Why do some come for a season, hurt us and then bail? I say this happens as a way to chip off parts of me that needed to be gone or erased or fine tuned. Like sand in a tumbler full of rocks, the abrasiveness that these people caused in my life just in fact polished me and helped make me better. Some people, friends, are meant to be left behind because where you are intended to go, they just won't fit in to what purpose you are meant to fulfill. Make sense? It took me a long time to understand that principle and even longer to actually accept it. 

I am not going to belabor the point or drag this out much longer. I will though add a couple of quotes that pretty much sum up what dynamic friends should bring into your life. Take care of those around you, especially the ones that take care of you. This advice can be taken to heart and put into practice and I guarantee you that you will never regret it. Here are a few quotes that really hit home with me.

“Even though we've changed and we're all finding our own place in the world, we all know that when the tears fall or the smile spreads across our face, we'll come to each other because no matter where this crazy world takes us, nothing will ever change so much to the point where we're not all still friends.”


“A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.”


“A friend is someone who, upon seeing another friend in immense pain, would rather be the one experiencing the pain than to have to watch their friend suffer.”

So to close this out, do some spring cleaning in your life pool, make an effort to get to really know those with whom you share commonalities, and always treasure the ones who have always and will always be by your side through whatever you go through in life. I hope and trust that you have good people around you that encourage, lift you up, brighten your day and inspire you always.