Masks and Steel

Here’s a thought. If you were in a pickle, like a big sliced dill pickle not just a tiny hamburger kind of pickle, whom would you call? If you need advice from someone where do you receive it? Now to some the obvious answer may be your parents or relatives, but how many of us have someone we know we can count on when things get rough? You see for the most part we all have acquaintances in our lives which whom we call friends but if this friend only shows up for you when it’s convenient on their watch, can you really call them a friend?

I read somewhere that you use steel to sharpen steel just as one friend should sharpen another. When I use that phrase and apply it to my friendships, I realize only a handful of them would be relevant to that quote. The others would be more like a piece of lumber. Steel and lumber do not run around together. It is not that I would likely want to see that pile of lumber on the wrong end of a match, but when I look at the big picture in life their purpose in mine is limited. It is not necessarily that these people are bad people, because all of us could potentially be somebody else’s lumber, but if you call yourself a friend you should not change the definition to fit your own.

I think a big problem in friendships is that we all try so hard to impress others around us that we put masks on to accomplish this task. I know I used to have a closet full myself but I did some house cleaning and got rid of most of them as I finally became comfortable with me. The problem with masks is you become somebody you’re not, and so these so called friends become friends with your mask instead of the you that’s underneath.

Show people you, not the you they want, but the you that you want. I just threw out a lot of you’s, wow that may have been a bit confusing. Basically all I’m saying is, we all have a story, and every person you meet wants to tell you their story. The reason we don’t though is because we want to tell real people what we are all about. We want to tell people that we know actually care. No person in a mask would care what you would have to say. So we keep reserved, and go on living how we think they would want us to. Masks are for Halloween and lumber sits in a lumberyard. Take off the mask and get the sharpeners ready. Friends are a valuable thing.