FRIENDS come and go, like the tides. It's sometimes a sad fact of reality and sometimes a blessing, depending on the “friend”. Not Facebook friends, real friends.
What constitutes a real friend? Facebook, and our ever advancing technologically savvy world, have definitely blurred the line.
David Wong, Senior Editor of Cracked.com says scientists have coined a term for the test of real friends, The Naked Photo Test. The test is: imagine a naked photo of yourself. Not just any naked photo - one with you in an extremely compromising, perhaps even highly abnormal position. How many of your "friends" would you trust to look after the photo and keep it secret? According to the theory, they are your real friends.
So what constitutes a "real" friend for the rest of us?
Do you class real friends as people who impact your life?
People you actually have face to face contact with, or would stop and chat to in the street?
The people allowed to see you without my make-up on?
The photo above is from one of my birthdays. It is typical of the type of stupid, fun, crazy stuff we all celebrated together (the girls front centre are NOT really kissing, by the way). They were my nearest and dearest circle of friends. I would have trusted them with my "naked photo", and they all saw me sans make-up multiple times. How many am I still close with? Not as many as I would like, because the tides changed and those swept out to sea found an alternate life and circle of friends elsewhere.
The poem Reason, Season, Lifetime has always helped me make sense of my ever changing friend list. Along with changing jobs, partners, houses, gyms, and so on, our friends rarely stay the same for any extended period of time. Or at best we lose touch, then reconnect months or years later, usually via Facebook.
Whatever your definition of "real" friend, and despite how you feel about friends coming and going, here's hoping that your friends make you feel as warm and fuzzy as the little characters in the clip below (what's not to love?).
Great article Jess and very true. As a member of the photo above I can say I relate to this article very much, our friendships have changed over the past year and grown distant due to changes in our lives and as we grow older it seems harder to hold onto those once "unbreakable friendships". It has made me realise I need to re-connect with some friends as well before they become aquaintances. Good stuff!!!
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