Friendships 101

I posted the video below on my Facbook page about a week or so ago. This is very powerful message on friends and the people who care about us. I feel this is a great segue from my thoughts on projections and how we tend to project our own insecurities on to other people. This is about an 8 minute clip of a larger sermon, so please take the time to view this before you read further:



This is a lesson in Friendship 101. It really does not matter if you are into religion or not, but what this man is saying is so very true. However, you can expand this definition when it comes to loved ones as well. We can all look at members of family and sort them into these 3 basic categories. However, when it comes to friendships the preacher and I differ a little. I think that there is only one type of friend...the rest, as my father would say, are associates...

Confidants, in my opinion, are the only true friends we will ever have. These are the people that love us no matter what goes down. I consider myself lucky to have a few of these. I can tell these individuals everything without real fear of being judged. With the way I am, these are the people that will laugh with me, cry with me, and go to war with me. I look for them as much as they look for me. These are also the people in my life that distance and time mean nothing. I have friends that sometimes I have not spoken to in months and sometimes even years and when we do finally speak it is like we never stopped talking. There is bond there that is very hard to break because they are into me as much as I am into them.

Constituents are people that love to hang out with us and party hard, but at the end of the day don't really care about what is going on with us. That does not make them bad people at all because we need these type of people that will help us getting things done in the purpose of a common goal. Think about the cool ass co-worker that will help us out of a jam but you wont really see outside of work with the exception of networking type of gatherings. Some of these people can be so cool that we may end up projecting the confidant type on to them. I know so many people like this and while they are cool they are not into me they are just for what I am for...whatever that may be.

Comrades are people that that we need to keep our eyes on. They serve the purpose of fulfilling a common goal like our constituents but they also may be the haters in our lives. I think these are the ones who we mistake as friends but really don't care about us. They care about what they care about and we might cross paths based on need but wont think too much about us at the end of the day. They will leap over or go around us to get something they want...and chances are if you are in the way or have what they want, they will disguise themselves as a friend.

I think that our true friend are our confidants. The other 2 categories are not even close to being more than associates, people we know and will actually "friend" on Facebook. It is our insecurities and lack of confidence that allows us to not recognize who really are for us. I cannot tell you how good it feels to hear from someone who has been in my life for a long time tell me how much they care for me because I was always there through the trials. Most of the time, these are the people that I may not spoken to in a long time for whatever reason.

As for me, I have no problems telling any one of my friends that I care for them and love them. After 911, I  realized that we can all be gone in a blink of an eye. I have said before that people come and go, in and out of our lives. They all serve a purpose, some for the good and some for the bad. We just need to do a better job of not only recognizing our confidants, but keeping them as well.

The preacher never talked about what happens to the confidants we lose...or maybe we never really lose them. Something to think about.