144/365 - Define This

Friends. It's a word that everyone knows and everyone has an understanding of. It's also one of those words that no two people probably define in the same way. I have had many friends come and go throughout my life, and I'm one to believe that everyone comes into our lives for a reason. I love this picture because it signifies how simple friendship can be. Friendship is made to be treasured, cherished--not something to take for granted. I miss the days when it didn't matter who you were friends with. You could be friends with boys and girls and rich people and poor people and black people and white people and everything in between and it just didn't matter. For some people, as we grow older, things change and suddenly these things that never mattered before take over and we find our closest friends slipping through our fingers. Sometimes it is over the silliest things and sometimes these reasons are more deep, but it's always sad to lose a friend in any way.

This is how I look at friendship. I think of every single person who crosses paths with me as a single thread in the fabric of my life. As I look at this tapestry, some colors of thread are much more pronounced, more significant. Others are there, but barely noticeable. However, without any of them, my tapestry would fall apart. Each and every person who has been in my life (for any amount of time) was put there for a reason. Sometimes it's hard to see why things are the way they are, but in retrospect it's amazing how clear things become. Everything happens for a reason, whether we are prepared to accept them or not, but it all works out in the end. I like to think of every moment as an opportunity to learn and to grow. Think back to a challenge in your life and how difficult it might have been. Fast forward to now. Do you see how you've grown or changed for the better because of it?

I'm the kind of person who likes getting to know other people. I cherish the fact that each one of us in unique and I like to find out why. Why we are the way we are and what along the way may have made us that way. I have friends who are every age imaginable. I have friends who aren't even in double digits yet and I have friends who are in their teens, twenties, thirties, and forties. Sometimes I get to thinking and I feel that my purpose on this earth is just to be the best friend I can be to everyone in my life. I've been told more times than I can recollect that I need to stop wasting so much time and energy on other people and their feelings and worry more about me, but I can't. I've tried and tried and I always put everyone else before me. People say I care too much but I don't see it that way. Nor do I think it's a bad thing. I try to make as many people laugh and smile every day as I possibly can, it's just how I am.

To every single one of my friends, past and present, I am so grateful for you in my life. I hope you all know this.



144/365
Rockfish Hoke Elementary School - Raeford, NC