Category: My Best Friend

Human beings are social beings in nature who find it difficult to stay alone. As a result, they require people who are close to them, people with whom they can share ideas and help one another. A person who is close to us and whom we enjoy spending time with is referred to as a friend. Everybody in life requires friends because they are always there when we need them. Friends can be categorized into best, fair and new friends.

Best friends are friends who can be trusted in all circumstances and who are ready to offer any assistance required. In other words, best friends have qualities that distinguish them from other types of friends. For people to be our best friends, they do not have to be cute or possess a lot of wealth, but best friends possess some crucial qualities.

One of the qualities that a best friend should possess is the ability to understand us. This means that the person knows us very well by recognizing our behaviors, fears, and the things will value and adore.

In addition, a friend who understands us knows when we are unhappy and comforts us. Another quality that is characteristic of best friends is honesty. A best friend should be able to keep our deepest secrets and should never talk ill of us or betray us.

Honest friends are trustworthy and we feel safe when we share secrets with them because we do not have worries that the information will spread to other people. A friend to qualify to be our best friend also needs to be caring. An example of a best friend is our parents or our spouses.

The second type of friends is referred to as a fair friends. Although fair friends are slightly different from best friends, they are friends who can be relied on in different ways. One of the qualities that should be possessed by a fair friend is impartiality.

Being impartial means that fair friends are just and they do not give information aimed at making us happy when, in real sense, there are potential risks. In all circumstances, fair friends like to see that we get the attitude that we deserve. Sometimes, we require people who tell us the truth, no matter how painful it might be, so that we avoid getting into trouble.

However, some friends praise us when they know that we are heading the wrong direction. Fair friends are honest enough to give us honest advices that save us from getting into trouble. An example of a fair friend is a work mate who challenges us to ensure that we do our best.

The third type of friends is new friends. Since human beings are social in nature, they interact with different people in different activities. During such interactions, they meet other people they have never met and known before and establish new contacts. These are usually referred to as new friends.

New friends are people we meet in our lives and gain interest in their character. They are important because they increase the number of friends that we have. Since we always need assistance in various ways, it is important to have new friends who can assist us.

It is, therefore, important to make new friends because, by doing this, we increase the number of people who can assist when in need. Examples of new friends include people we meet during meetings, seminars and in learning institutions.

Sometimes in life, we get stronger in influenced by events that happen to other people, generally people closer to us. I was best friends with a girl, we could finish each other’s sentences, and we always knew what the other was thinking. We shared everything, all the events of our daily lives, significant or not. Still, I felt there a certain impenetrable wall, behind which she often hid, with a blank smile on her face to avoid having to answer any questions.

There was a subtle air of mystery in her aura, and it often gave me the feeling that as well as I knew her, there was more to her than she ever let on. She was a unique person in many ways, a paradox of characteristics that is very difficult to find in any one person. She was strongly emotional and fearlessly opinionated. I often felt her fearless attitude was the foil for her insecurities and the untapped emotion inside her which she didn’t reveal to anyone.

She had a strong support system, a loving family, and a group of friends who truly cared, as friends should. She was always surrounded by family and friends, and I often felt like she was striving to be more expressive, to share her emotions so that she could become a better individual, and learn from her experiences. But something inside of her didn’t let her, she would try, fail, and then retreat back in her cozy cocoon, where she kept everyone at arm’s length, even her best friends.

It didn’t stop her from wanting to be different though. She yearned desperately to become a more open person, to live her life out loud, to express her dreams and aspirations, her fears and insecurities, her inner self. She wanted to tell everyone around her that she was a person who loved, who needed to be loved, who believed and had dreams which she wished would someday come true. That she was different than the façade she had built around herself. It was only after a drastic event that fate threw her way, which changed her forever, and allowed this transformation to take place.

It was the winter of 2005 when we were sitting together one day trying to make sense of a major assignment that was due the next day when her father called her and gave her the news which rocked her world as she knew it. The rock in her life, the one around whom her whole life had been built so far, was no longer going to be home when she went home that day. Her mother had been struggling with breast cancer for fifteen years and had been in and out of the hospital throughout her childhood.

And yet she was the strongest woman she knew, who, despite her illness, had raised her children just like any other mother, if not better. She had recently come back from the hospital but had suffered a severe relapse which her weak body could not recover from. The news shook her very core, and though the first feeling she felt was a blank numbness, her façade crumbled as tears she never knew she had flowed down her face as if they would never stop.

Winter winds whipped across her face, and the falling teardrops somehow allowed her to see, smell and hear the things around her in a way she never had before. Suddenly she was completely aware of this new, changed world she would have to live in for the rest of her life, and the shocking realization of utter loneliness felt like a slap on her face. Her cozy cocoon was no longer so, and she knew she needed to deal with this pain, to live this pain, to experience it, and then move on. And that she did.

My friend was a completely different person after that. It was as if the shock had jolted her alive, forced her to realize that life is short, one must embrace it head-on and live each day like it was the last. And for all these things, she will always be the person who influenced me to a great extent, and from whom I learned the most.