Have you noticed that everyone is different? Have you taken the time to get to know different people? It is really interesting, or at least to me it is. I had a really good friend when I was younger, someone that I would spend a considerable time with. Even to this day we spend a lot of time together whenever we are in the same country. However, at one point we separated, him being three years older than me, we found it hard to get on with each other. This was the period were I was still in primary and he moved up to secondary (middle school). During this period I started to spend a lot more time with someone that was a few years younger than me. Unfortunately the same thing that happened with my first friend happened again in this relationship. To make things worse my family and I moved to Egypt during that period. Therefore my friendship with the younger guy was not ever really redeemed the way it was with the first guy. During this summer I have found that I enjoy his company again, the same way that I once did before. This is a bit unfortunate, only because it has taken about 7 years for this to happen.

It is interesting to think that there are so many different people out there that we could be great friends with, people that we have a similar humour to or who would look at the situation in the same way or differently but either way would be able to help us through it. There are so many different people in the world, that it is a shame we only get to meet an extremely small percentage of the population. You could see someone on TV whose house has just been hit by a flood or whose government is corrupt and they are suffering because of the government’s decisions, and you would never know if just maybe they had been in a different situation, lived a couple blocks away from you, whether or not you would have been friends.

It is a great shame that some of us, me included, would spend a whole life time with a small set of close friends, and never know the greatness of a wide circle of friends. Now I am not saying that having close friends is bad. I long to have close friends and I thank God for the gift of my close friends, even though they may not be in the same country as me, I am honoured to call them my close friends. However, I also realise that it is not enough to just wave at people from the sidelines and pretend to care. I have a cousin that I grew up with, and sadly once I moved to Egypt, we also started to move apart in our relationship, and now I hardly know him. And it is depressing because he is family and also he is a human being; a human being that has a great sense of humour and a wonderful character.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we can live in a bit of a shell and not pay much attention to who and what is going on around us, but it is better to get out of my comfort zone and meet new people and have fun with them. Hopefully I will put that into practise and not just think about it now and again.