Who do you consider to be close friends? Close friendships may be a more rare commodity than we might think. A close friend might not be one you do everything with. In fact, they may live far away. But a close friend is one who knows your struggles, your faults, and aspirations and accepts you as you are. True friends offer opportunities and encourage us to grow in maturity, but our ‘changing’ is not the expectation of the friendship. I think the best of friends don’t insist that you see everything the same as you do. A good test of love is our ability to befriend people who are different from us.

It has been said that vitamins can help build and develop friendships: the best vitamin for friendship is B1 (be one). I don’t know who wrote this short commentary on friendship but I think it offers good counsel for us and may even be a good checklist for us to evaluate our own friendship skills:

“To dwell on a friend’s mistake is to make a second mistake.

A person can always be your friend even if not a friend in all ways.

Allow your friend to make mistakes and give yourself the same freedom.

Your todays will be happier if you cease to dwell on what happened yesterday or on what may come tomorrow.

A friend is like crystal, handle with care.

Should you find fault with a friend convey it quietly.

Don’t let anger stand in the way. Remember friendships need to be nurtured with forgiveness.

Bury the hatchet and unearth the joy of an old friendship.

Be tolerant of your friends. Even the pick of the bunch has a few blemishes.

and finally. . .

Friendship can endure over many years even when the content of that friendship changes greatly.”

What kind of friend do you want to have. Likely you’ll find them when you become that kind of friend to the friendless.