Good Friend or Bad Friend?

A Wise Man was relaxing at home, reading a book, when his youngest daughter came to him and asked him, ‘Dad, how do I know if someone who says they are my friend is really my friend?’
And a shadow briefly passed over The Wise Man’s soul for he knew that this question meant his daughter was questioning her position in the world with respect to others, and he knew this meant she was growing, innocence was fading away to be slowly replaced by the complications and contradictions of the adult world. From this point on he knew his role would not be father to a small child, but guide and mentor for a developing adult.
In that spirit, then, he sat down, smiled, lifted the girl on to his lap and said…’well…’

Truth is, my daughter, that as you grow to be even bigger and more grown up than you are now, you’ll realise that none of us are in as much control of our lives as we like to think we are. So much of what happens to us happens because of chance and coincidence and that chance and coincidence is decided by The Blind Old Weaver Of Fate as She spins together the cloth that makes up the story of our lives. Next to her, by her spinning wheel, sits a huge pile of jumbled thread and from this pile she picks – at random, for She is blind, after all – the threads that she will weave together to spin our stories. Some of these threads are white, some silver, some gold and some black. The white threads represents days that are, well, just ordinary, neither good nor bad – the kind of days that will make up most of our lives. The silver threads are good days, the kind of days that are full of laughter and friendship, the kind of days that leave you with a smile on your face. The gold threads represent exceptional and rare days, days of success and achievement, pure triumph even, and days of magic like getting married or having a baby. The black threads, though…ahh…the black threads…the black threads are the bad days, days of desolation, despair, loss – the kind of days that steal your breath, that crush and compress and suffocate and squeeze hope out of your soul. It’s when you have these ‘black thread’ days – and, my daughter, you will have these days, when they come be strong and remember they will pass - that you’ll discover if a friend is really a friend.
You see, a true friend is someone who loves and cares for you and who will stick with you through good and bad. A friend who is not real is someone who is your ‘friend’ only because you amuse them or because they feel they can get something from you – as soon as things are bad for you, when you have those black thread days, these false friends will show themselves to be false by what they say.
For if you are struggling in life a good friend will say things like:
‘Anytime you need to talk, just let me know…’
‘I’m your friend, I’m here for you, always…’
‘These things happen to us all, you’ll be fine…’
‘What can I do to help…’
‘I understand…’
But a ‘friend’ who is really no friend at all will say:
‘I told you so...’
Well, what do you expect…’
You should have done this…you should have done that…’
‘You need to go on medication…’
‘Really, it’s your own fault…’
‘Whatever…anyway, let’s talk about me…’
‘Sorry…I’m far too busy to talk now…’

Throughout her life, The Wise Man’s daughter was well served by her father’s advice on the subject of friends and when she found a friend who responded to the ‘black threads’ in her life like a true friend she would cherish them and hold them dear and when she found a ‘friend’ to be nothing more than a selfish person out only for what they could get, she cut them out of her life as she would a malignant cancer from her body.