Importance of Friendships

  Throughout the many unique and individual experiences I went through, the friendships that I made were one in a million.  These friends shaped me and formed me in so many ways.  I have learned an unfathomable amount through friendships as well as accumulating a lot of personal growth.  The significance of friendships in my own Malaysian experience has taught me unique lessons, an open mind, respect, growth, and has given me a strong feeling for who I am. During my life I have been exposed to many kinds of people of all ages and ethnicities which have taught me things that I may have never learned.Thinking back, through all the memories and times, I got a taste of each persons personality in my personal experiences with them. I found many of those people who I enjoy to be with because we share that common ground that lets you be yourself and feel comfortable. It really feels good to gave friends on the same level as you. Friendship is a very personal and unique thing.  No two relation between any two people will ever be the same because only those people know what they have been through or shared together.  This is what makes friendship such an exceptional thing. A large part of friendship is learning lessons together, and for almost everything in the world there is a lesson that must be learned. Learning these lessons through friendships is a very powerful and exceptional thing.  These lessons have varied from one extreme to the other in my life and have changed and shaped a large majority of my views and perceptions.  Learning any lesson with a friend, be it significant or not, will bring you closer together; and furthermore that lesson that you learned was done in your own way which only you will have felt and experienced.  Some important lessons that had precedence in my life were about life in general, love, happiness, fear and a handful of other feelings.  From the time of my first friend I have begun learning about life, basically what I like to do and what I am all about.  Only when you can truly be yourself around a person or people is when you start to learn about yourself.  And the thing is that what you did or what you or someone else did, when it comes down to it, you did it and no one else.  No one else could feel the way you did or acted or reacted the way you personally did.  That aspect makes it more unique than anything else. So many feelings have been felt by myself about other friends that it would be impossible to even sum up.  A friendship is the only thing that can teach you some things about yourself, and others as well.Through friendships I have accumulated a very open-mind by allowing myself to really get into a person and learn what they are all about.  When you learn a significant amount about other people and their lives, one can look back and reflect on your own life.  I could never walk up to a person with my head filled with prejudgments.  This is based on my own experiences with so many people where I might of met them thinking something in my head, but when I really got to know them I was so surprised because they turned out to be so opposite.  I am grateful for the things I have learned from my friends because some people might never achieve that open mind, but that is only my unique personal experience. Many times I wonder how I met some of the people I did or did some of the things that I did with some people?  My personal answer is that I believe that the people I met and things I did were all meant to happen for a reason that is unknown to me, but I do know that they were meant to happen to me and only me.  Maybe I am being equipped with knowledge and experiences that will help me in my future life.Through my experiences with friends, a major lesson I learned was respect.  A close, strong friendship is a powerful friendship because that is when you know that you can always count on that person, and through that aspect a large respect can be formed.  When I began to play sports is when I first felt these feelings of great respect and care for another person. There is something about sports, the winning together, the losing together, the good and the bad, that seems to bring people closer together.  When you're playing a football game in the fourth quarter, in the pouring rain and biting cold, with the sweat stinging your eyes and you need to stop the other team on the 1 yard line.  You look around then and you know who you're friends are.  You can know that no matter whether you win or lose, the team and you¹re friends will still be there.  Knowing that makes me feel a great respect for them. I have personally grown a great deal through the experiences with every friendship I have had.  And the unique part of that is that the ways in which I have grown are mine alone and could never be exactly experienced by another person.  By allowing myself to grow with others I have had a vast number of their experiences in which I could look at and then make my decision based on what I know from them and myself, where on the other hand some may only have their own experiences to base their decisions. In conclusion, the friendships that I personally made were unique and could never be exactly the same for another person.  I have learned an unfathomable amount about life, love, and everything and that has made me grow.  The significance of friendship in my own american experience taught me valuable lessons, an open mind, respect, growth and has given me the basis of who I am today. Many varied lessons that I experienced with friends have changed and shaped a large part of my views and perceptions.  I found that learning lessons with friends brings you closer together.  Only with a friendship can some things be felt and learned.An extremely important thing I got out of friendship was achieving an open mind.  This was achieved through a diverse set of friends that had a wide range of lifestyles and views, and I got to see them all. I learned a great respect for my friends and it has made my friendships strong.  Furthermore, I grew a great deal from all the experiences I went through with my friends.  Sometimes a friend is the only teacher for some lessons.  A friendship is something very personal and powerful and plays an important and unique role in my life - Pream Anand Aka Dj Baby Joe Black