Everything Is About Choices
Think about everything you own or have in your life, whether it's the people in your life, your car, your job, etc. Did all those things just end up on your lap? Of course not. Everything you have in your life came to you because you decided it should be there. Anyone with half a brain knows that there are certain things in life you must choose carefully, such as your barber, your tailor, your mistress, and others you don't have to spend too much time on like your car, your bank, or your wife. Actually, this isn't true; you should take your time when selecting your car or bank.
The point here is that one of the most important things in life is your friends, so you should be equally picky about selecting them, the way you'd be selecting tomatoes for your wife's pasta dishes. Friends are your backbone, and they are usually the ones you let your guard down with and to whom you expose your weaknesses, even though I think you should never expose your weaknesses to nobody (trust me I know what this can do to you).
Do You Really Know The Guy
Case in point, you meet a guy, you get to know him, you start doing things together, you know, guy things , like going to the local bar, chasing tail, making a deal and there, the usual. You think you know the guy, so you start telling him more intimate things, like how you are screwing the government out of taxes, how you are cheating on your wife, how you gamble daily. But what do you really know about this guy that you should be telling him your secrets?
You had a couple of beers together, you shared some laughs, ...so what? Does a little male bonding mean you should automatically open up, and give him your trust? Come on, I should hit you across the head now if you even have to think about it.
A Friend is A Commodity
What is a friend? A friend is such like anything else, a commodity to be used when the need arises. We have friends because when we need something, they are available to provide a service, whether it's to talk about how your wife's friends are screwing you over, because you want reservation at some chic joint, or because you don't like playing golf alone (and what is with golf, do you know how many soccer fields you can build with all that wasted green space?). Friends are there because we are selfish, self-absorbed people, who don't like to do things ourselves.
Don't even bother telling me that friends are people we care for, blah, blah, blah. You care for your friends because they know everything about you or because they owe you money. Without those two things, your caring level drops fast. In life, we don't make friends, we make contacts. The minute you realize this is the minute you start making it in life.
Now, I may come off as a wise guy but I'm also human, and despite everything I've said, nobody can do anything alone. At a certain point in our lives, we all need friends, check this, close friends, because friends can be very valuable. With that in mind, you have to realize that you must be very careful about choosing the select few (and privileged in my case), people that you can say are your good friends .
Suffering Leads to Closeness
I once heard a man say that there is no better way for two men to become closer than by pulling-off a crime together, because after this moment you rely on each other not to rat out the other. I've also heard of someone saying that the only way you can get close to someone is by suffering together. I don't think that getting my leg chopped off with some guy named Protus, no matter how much we suffer, will bring us close together.
For some reason we do come together when we suffer together. The only time you will ever know who your friends are are when you need them the most. It's a conditional match unless you get in serious trouble (O.J. Simpson kind of trouble), you won't really know who will stand by you and who will desert you. If you go through life without ever getting in this kind of trouble, you will never know who were your real friends.
A friend of a frined of mine just got convicted for something he could have avoided. I can guarantee you that if he had read my articles, he wouldn't be in jail, but in my mind, he will always be a close friend to my friend. This is not because he cares about him, but because when he was a stupid 24 year-old, they did some things that let's just say the law would frown upon.
I can't be there to tell you which morons don't deserve your friendship and which do, but I can tell you to be very careful before you let your guard down and trust another, because trust is a very powerful thing.
the audacious truth
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