Welcome to week 7 of Contemplation, where I share with you my response to a prompt from my Kikki.K A Sentence A Day journal. I invite you to join me and share your response by writing a new post and linking back to this one.
My apologies for not updating last week’s post with the links from my fellow Contemplaters. I have been back to Brisbane for my best friend’s big birthday bash and it’s been very hectic buy absolutely brilliant. I will add them in once I return 😊
Hopefully, you will forgive me since this prompt is about friendship.
For week 7, here is the prompt: What quality is most important to you in a friend?
Isn’t it funny how the elements of friendship become so different over the years? Children seem to make friends quite easily, they’re less judgemental, more open and they dive right in. I was like that even into adulthood – making friends with everyone. I’m a fairly open person, often joking that my customers know my whole life story after a week of training with me.
And I’m still mostly like that with my customers. Proper friendship, however, that’s a more difficult process, completely reliant on quality give-and-take. As adults, we are more reserved about who we open up to. Even a couple of years ago I was quick to share everything with new friends but I learnt the hard way that not everyone has your best interests at heart. Not everyone will respect your privacy or even check with you before believing stories about you and jumping to conclusions.
These days, I have less really close friends, but they are my kindred spirits. They are people who I can text or call or meet for coffee or wine or dinner and we can just chat as if we’d never been away from each other. They know a lot about me and I know a lot about them. They get my humour, they remember what’s important in my life and they are all different – I share a different trait with each of them.
What I value most in each of my friends is loyalty. One hundred percent. I give my whole self to each relationship and it would break my heart to have that trust destroyed. It has broken my heart when it happened before.
I’m glad it happened when I was older because while it hurt me a great deal, I was lucky to finally see that this person was not loyal to me and had never really cared about my feelings not had ever put me first. In hindsight (isn’t that a marvellous thing?), it was a turning point for me. I was already starting to take photography seriously, but it pushed me to step outside my comfort zone and start blogging. And to start doing so many other things that have made me a more social person who is more open and willing to trying new things.
Oops, I didn’t mean to get quite so deep on this one, but there it is…
Anyhoo, loyalty is my number one requirement. Kindness, a sense of humour, not being overly possessive, those are all important to me. But I need my friends to be loyal, that’s a deal breaker.
So tell me, what’s important to you in a friend?
Here are the responses from my fellow Contemplators. I apologise if I miss you out, the ping backs weren’t working!
Julie Powell – Photographer & Graphic Artist
x desleyjane
Musings of a Frequent Flying Scientist 
I’d love to hear from you!