Friends Are Like Sand

A few years ago, I had a friend who felt like he was losing his best friend. He was very sad and confused about the situation and could not find anyone who could help him. One day, I had asked him why he wasn't acting like his normal self and he told me that he could not figure out why his friend was slipping away like he was.

In previous years, I have gone through similar problems with my friends. There had been not fights or arguments between us and, in my mind, they were just slipping away for no reason. Meaning that we still had the same interests and everything. It was because of this that I told him I would do my best to help him get his best friend back.

The first step to finding any solution to a problem is to figure out the base of the problem. In this case, it took a couple of days before I was finally able to give my friend the advice he needed.

At first, I had thought that he had been "letting the string slip away", like my personal quote warns about. ("Friends are like balloons; if you don't hold on to the string that keeps you together, then they will float away." ~ My Personal Quote. Also see my poem "Balloons & Friends".) The things that he told me had been happening at first told me that maybe the "string" that had been holding them together was slipping from his fingers due to their interests or hobbies changing. When I suggested this, though, he told me that he had been spending a lot of time with his best friend doing things that they both enjoyed.

Upon hearing that information, I was stuck as to how to help him. I had forgotten another saying that I remembered the next day. "Friends are like sand, the tighter you hold on, the more they slip away." That is the saying that solved the problem in the end. My friend had been holding on too tightly to his friendship with his best friend, causing his friend to slip away because he wanted a break for a few days.

After telling my friend what I had figured out, he said that he would lay off for a while and not insist that they spend a whole bunch of time together. About a week later, he told me that it had worked and that his best friend was hanging out with him like they had before.