Friends

I love being with my friends. They mean a lot to me. And I strongly believe that everyone needs friends in order to live - Even Robinson Crusoe needs a parrot, alright?

To me, family and friends are 2 separate things. I do NOT believe that "my family members are my friends, so I don't need friends outside of the house since I could just stay home with my family-cum-friends". 

Sorry but not sorry, I totally despise that idea. 

 

I'll make this clearer. 

You are a plain canvas when you come into this world. Your parents are the ones who invented this canvas that is put there readily to be painted. Your family members are the ones who drew the outline of the sketch on the canvas. Then, in order for this picture to be completed, you need your friends and life experiences all along the way - they are like the water colour that you NEED to use to paint this picture. 

Every friend you make in life is an unique individual. To them, you are unique too.

Every single friend you make throughout your life, regardless of their sincerity or loyalty in becoming your friend, they are a stand alone colour for your canvas. Good friends are the bright colours that make the picture lively and bright and cheerful but bad friends add the darkness to the picture.

At the end of the day, it is because of the presence of the bad friends in your life that makes you even more grateful and appreciative towards your good friends. Because nothing in life comes without a shadow. You need the darkness to bring out the goodness in things, as well as people. 

I strongly believe in that. 

 

Of course I cannot say for sure that people who don't have many friends are missing out in life, but I have known a few people who don't bother to put effort into maintaining a friendship or making friends. In relation to this, through experience, I realised that no matter how successful these people become or no matter how much they have achieved in life or no matter how close they are with their family, they are definitely lacking something that makes them socially awkward or even not functioning with the certain level of common sense in the normal human world. 

You see, you will have a certain amount of family members but you can have unlimited number of friends. Just count the number of people you have on your Facebook. The main reason the number increases is because of the new FRIENDS who don't have any blood relation to you who are spicing up your Facebook feed. 

With the unlimited amount of friends you can make in this world, you are bound to get unlimited outlooks and perspectives of life from your friends too.

Not everyone thinks the same and you don't have to agree with everyone nor get everyone to agree with you. By mingling with friends, you ought to learn how to socialise, how to keep the friendship going with toleration, compassion, understanding - well, unless you can't be bothered whether you lose that friend or not, then that makes it a different story. You need to learn that everyone has been brought up a different way and everyone has a different story to tell AND ACCEPT THIS DIFFERENCE.

On the other hand, your family members are the ones who brought you up to the way you are this day. They are your comfort zone - you grew up with them, you live with them and you have had a gazillion of meals with them. Whether you know/acknowledge it or not, they have a huge impact on you as a person because you are a product of your family.

Personally, I feel that this is the crucial issue that people tend to overlook when they don't really have friends. They don't know the differences, they don't know that they need a lot of understanding to socialise with someone, they also don't know that need to accept and respect a lot of things to be someone's friend. 

You can come from a family that smokes but you cannot ask your friend to smoke in order to be able to befriend you. 

You can come from a rich family but you cannot look down on people who don't wear the same level of luxury brands as you.

You can come from a very traditional family but you cannot judge someone for not being as conservative as you do. 

The same thing goes to you can't expect everyone you meet will be a good and true friend to you because at the end of the day, everything comes down to the fact that we are all humans with individual preferences. AND THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH IT.

I bet you don't like every single (close or distant) relative within your family too.

Since every single friend is a standalone colour for the canvas, regardless of who you meet in life, they help paint the canvas to make it 1 little step nearer to the completion phase.

For my friends out there, every single one of you, thank you for being a part of my canvas :) LOVE YOU ALL xoxo