Friendship in a Free Society

Many people unwitingly become friends with individuals whom, in reality, they don't at all match up with. One cause of this issue might be the failure to ever have considered why you became friends in the first place.
 If you find yourself with this situation, you might consider writing down the qualities that are important to you in people with whom you choose to associate. You could then review your list of friends to determine which individuals on the list have or don't have most of the qualities you've determined are important to you.

In the category of friends, one person might list for example, honesty, loyalty, fun personality, sense of humor, conversational, forthcoming, dependable, interesting, sincere, caring, kind and so on. They could then consider how each of their friends (or good acquaintances) matches up with each of these qualities. Based on the outcome, that person would be free to consider making adjustments they deem appropriate or necessary, including adding to or deleting from their list of friends.

When you consider there are approximately 7 billion people on our planet and out of that group, we get to pick our friends, it gives us the option of making adjustments relative to who our friends are as we make the journey through life. The great thing is, we get to do this completely at our individual discretion. As a bonus, we don't have to worry about being wrong, unless of course we make a mistake of adding/deleting the wrong friend. However, even choosing the wrong friend doesn't make you wrong, it just makes you naive.

The right to choose our friends, surely must be one of the great things about living in a free society. And if you don't currently have any friends, worry not : that will be addressed in an upcoming issue of Old and Ridiculous. Thank for tuning in...my friend!