We all need friends. Friends are a necessary component of life, aren’t they? And you think to yourself when you’re a very, very small child, your first images of friends.
I remember when I was, gosh, maybe two or three years old, I had a friend, her name was Pam Davidson, and she would come over, and we had a lot of fun together. And then one time I had this enormous table with a lot of toy soldiers all set up.
My father had made this table, and these two armies are going to fight. And she accidentally touched the table, and gosh, the war was over. Half my army died immediately, which produced shock.
I began to scream, she began to cry. She ran into my house, my mother phoned her mother, and you know how it goes. We had difficulties, so my friendship with this beautiful young woman ended rather quickly, if I remember.
So I’m just teasing, of course. But friends are necessary, and this becomes a bit of a problem, doesn’t it? Because the quality of our friends over time could potentially grow or diminish, depending on the social circle that we choose to enter into.
And if we find bad friends, what’s the old idiom? Birds of a feather flock together.
So if we have bad friends and we’re a bit insecure, and perhaps one of our friends is a bit better looking, or more worldly, whatever it is, we can very quickly get pulled into the wrong orbit.
And this is where I think the male figure in our society is extremely important, because your father will correct your behavior.
And so if you have bad friends, he will stop those friends. Won’t he? He’ll stop the relationship, and he will allow you to nurture new friends.
I was watching a program with Denzel Washington once, the very famous actor, because Denzel Washington obviously is black. And he said that when he was growing up in high school, he had six friends, plus himself, seven.
So together they were a team, seven people. And the other six boys didn’t have a father, and they all ended up in prison, in prison.
And Denzel Washington went on to be this famous, renowned actor, and the other boys grew up into men, and got the wrong friends, obviously. In the black community, I’ve read that only one in eight families actually has a father today.
And so obviously, you need a father figure. So you’re going to find a local, perhaps gangster or whatever, and you’re going to slowly get nurtured into the wrong situation. And I mean, it even gets worse.
So let’s say, for instance, that you end up with bad friends, right? And so then those bad friends produce the necessary results. And for whatever reason, you get arrested by the police and you’re removed from those friends for a period of time.
And then you will return, obviously, to your suburb or your community or your city or whatever it is. And you’re obviously going to associate with the same group of friends. And so you never get out, really, do you?
This recidivism is enormous in prisons because obviously those are our friends, aren’t they? And so I guess it comes back to the old story.
I must be my own best friend first. I must at some point have a talk with myself and say, Leon, however you’re feeling about you in the exterior world, you better have a chat with yourself. You need a couple of things here, right?
You need to answer these three questions. Why am I here? What’s my mission?
What’s gonna happen to me when I die? And if the circumstances seem quite incorrect relative to your life, you have to change your reality. You have no choice.
Or just be like so many fools in life, go along with the sheep, and go over the edge as they all keep running over the cliff, right? But if you don’t want that, you better talk to yourself.
You know, if we go way back in history, Aristotle, he basically broke friendships into three types. One was the friendship of utility. Those are the friends that will perhaps at a store, they will help you get a job, this sort of thing.
Then you have perhaps the friendship of pleasure. These are people you can go dancing with, you can go drinking with, jogging with, whatever. And then you end up with real friends, friends that you love, basically.
They’re like your own family in that extent, right? And I think those are the kinds of friendships that you probably will be redeeming. I have two friends, for instance, that I’ve had for over 50 years.
And this is an interesting phenomenon, because both are getting on in years. I guess I am as well, but I’m pretty healthy. I’m lucky.
But one of my friends is 95 years old. I mean, that’s pretty old. So obviously, he’s going to be transiting at some time in the near future, right?
Obviously, my other friend, he’s not as healthy, perhaps as I am. So, you know, these are precious gems, and you will not replace them, for sure. So, conversation the other day came up in class.
Let’s say, for instance, I have absolutely no friends now. I’m getting a bit on in years, and for whatever reason, my social circle has changed. Either it’s changed because I’ve moved, relocation, or it’s changed because perhaps my friends have died.
They’ve passed on. What do I do? Well, I think you have to create social circumstances that you meet new people.
You either, you have to go to school again, for instance, or you need to get a job, or perhaps you need to join some form of community center, or take on some activity, whatever it is, but you obviously are going to have to increase the people pool.
You’re going to need more associations, right? Because without friendship, we inevitably die, in a sense. No, I know there are very holy people, there are monks that live in the mountains, but they have another friendship.
They have a friendship with the divine, with God. And I understand this kind of friendship. I don’t have it.
You know, I do say my prayers and all that, but this divine friendship is something that requires years of study to properly find that relationship, I am sure. But it exists, of course.
But unless you’re willing to put in the study, you’re going to need earthly friends.
So think to yourself that I’m going to find good quality friends, men and women, of course, that are going to nurture me forward, because friendship is a wonderful thing, and without it, I don’t grow.
I guess initially when you begin a friendship, you test each other. So David and I had, gosh, 45 days on the Camino. I guess that was a test of friendship, wasn’t it?
You know, so think this to yourself. We need friends, but we need good friends. But the first person I must be friends with is, of course, myself.
And then I think I need a relationship with God, Gaia, or the universe. And then, of course, I need earthly friends, decent men and women that can help me grow. So, you know what they say, you know what they say.
You need friendships if you’re going to grow. And critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care.
God bless. Bye bye.