What is the global trend in relationships and human connections?
In any business or organizational setup, there is a strong emphasis on relationships, connections, team building, collaboration, and team solidarity. You are just a click away from meeting a new friend, a business associate that will transform your life. You cannot afford to live your life in isolation from people who can make you better. You must learn to collaborate with others to have a healthy and balanced life that is void of pain, shame, or trauma. No matter what you have heard about humans. I have come to the simple fact that humans are created to thrive on connection. Don’t listen to any fable that states otherwise. You need solid friendship, committed companionship, and next-level collaboration to succeed, especially in this twenty-first century. Another fun fact is that on many occasions, friends and associates can be more useful than those who have a blood tie to you. Understanding this has helped me to cultivate faithful and enduring friendships with others that have transformed my universe altogether.
Value of Friendship
Friendship is a sacred commitment to trust and care for someone you hold in high esteem, whom you are not really expecting any reward from in return for the gift of your friendship. But here is the twist: when you initiate such a friendship, don’t seek people’s approval to be relevant or make life comprehensible to you. If you do so, you will live all your life in deep regret. Caroline Myss observes that “When you do not seek or need approval, you are at your most powerful.” But whenever you seek or need the approval of others to remain in a friendship, you are in the wrong friendship. At this point, people’s goal will be to toy with your emotions and leave you at their mercy for you to survive. “Remember, anyone can love you when the sun is shining. In the storms is where you learn who truly cares for you.” – Anonymous.
The Key to Nurturing an Enduring Friendship
The key to nurturing an enduring friendship is mutual care — consistently showing up for one another with empathy, commitment, trust, and respect. This means active listening, honest communication, and supporting each other through the highs and lows of life. It also involves shared experience of memorable events and forgiveness for mutual imperfections in order to strengthen the bond of friendship over time.
The Measure of True Friendship
Everyone is in a friendship of some sort, which could be abusive, oppressive, or mutually beneficial. The most intriguing part of the deal, whether you accept it or not, is that everyone in friendship with you has an agenda, or reasons why they maintain a close connection with you. Don’t be naïve when people ask for your friendship. Hundred percent of the time, they want something from you. The good ones are not out to harm you, but they want something from you, and you also want something from them. This is a positive exchange of values! It took me forty-eight years of my life to realize this fact of life. Validate the richness of your friendship by the kind of results it is producing in and around your life. Some people’s goal is just to drain you by sapping energy out of you, but don’t let them because the power of choice of friendship is in your hands.
When it comes to picking your friends, choose very wisely. Don’t let anyone rein you in an unprofitable friendship. Jim Rohn captures it so elegantly well when he wrote: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
In the political landscape, the effectiveness of a political leader is going to be directly proportional to the type of advisers he has around him. A political philosopher says, “The first method of estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” – Niccolo Machiavelli.
The Purpose of Friendship
The existence of challenges in different shapes or modes is what makes our friendship with one another very solid and enduring. At least, this is what true friendship has done in my own life. The greatest book on earth, in my own opinion, the Bible says, “iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17). This simple phrase has had a profound influence on me in how I view people who try to make me better than I used to be. Their simple techniques for solving life’s problems have made a huge impact on me. There is this anonymous quote I came across recently, which says, “People who introduce you to new ways of thinking and new ways of seeing life are so important.” This, for me, is the essence of what true friendship is! Good friends help you to experience life at a whole new level. Another profound gem from the Bible states, “He who walks with the wise shall be wise, but the companion of fools shall be destroyed.” (Proverbs 13:20).
The Test of True Friendship
Every true friendship will always be put to the test. Most friendships do not last forever, no matter how hard you try to preserve them. It is only a matter of time before some of them begin to disintegrate when they are put to the test of life. The outcome may not be the fault of any of you. The law of life allows water to always find its level when the chaos is over. I have had several friendships collapse before my eyes despite my effort to keep them because of the value they brought to my life at the beginning. For reasons that I cannot fully articulate, those friendships cave in, and after much effort to restore them without success, I had to let them go! Some friends have walked out of my life, but I have also gained some new ones in the process. While I can’t guarantee the stability of some of my friendships, I usually try my best, just as the Bible recommends, to make myself friendly to retain friends. But in a situation, people begin to communicate to you through their body language that they have moved on, don’t struggle in such relationships anymore; it is time for you too to move on to preserve your serenity. “Remember, anyone can love you when the sun is shining. In the storms is where you learn who truly cares for you.” – Anonymous
The Eternal Truth About Friendship
The eternally revealed truth about friendship is mutual agreement. This is the law that allows you to be there for one another, even in difficult times. That is why I constantly give credit to my good friend Kunle Banwo, who is my co-host during my monthly Leadership Blueprint Podcast. Kunle has seen me through. We were classmates in secondary school. There was nothing to hide from him; we ate food together in college without meat, and we sometimes went hungry together without food. I was there for him when he had his difficult moments. He was much more there for me when I lost everything in 2004/05, and almost at the brink of losing my faith because of the pain of failure I suffered. He came looking for me in my frustration.
He worked very hard to get employment for me at his office in Apapa, Lagos, by speaking well of me to his Boss. The boss was ready to employ me, but I wasn’t ready due to my deep emotional trauma at the time. Still, he never gave up on me. When he traveled abroad. He always remembered his friend by calling me constantly. Again, because I understand how friendship works, while he was abroad, I never bothered him with my personal needs. I ensured our point of conversation was always to stir up commitment in us to be better at whatever we do. I was valued by Kunle, and I cannot pretend not to know it. The level of mutual affection and understanding that I had and continue to have with Kunle left a deep impression on my mind. I knew without mincing words that this is a friend who is closer than a brother. That is why I still believe in the biblical maxim “Can two walk together unless they agree?” (Amos 3:3)
The Main Corruption of True Friendship
Friendship, as beneficial as it may seem, can also lead to destruction through evil communication. The Bible was spot on when it declared, “evil communication corrupts good manners.” Your circle of friendship is crucial to what becomes of you in life. The wrong friendship can send you to your early grave. So, choose wisely. There is nothing I am more conscious about in life than those I call my friends. It is not pride; I am only guarding my future very jealously, so that a bad friendship will not pull me down.
George Washington reminded us, “It is far better to be alone than to be in bad company.” Do away with every unprofitable friendship and be intentional about those whom you call your friends.
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