Who matters to us?

This past week I recently got in contact with two of my friends from high school. There has been a long gap since I have spoken to either of them. One was my best friend even up through the first 2 years of college. The other was a friend I lost contact with as soon as we graduated. We always had laughs and fun together. Looking back I regretted I lost contact with them.

I remember the day Mike and I met in home room back in the sixth grade. Ever since then we were friends. Talked about video games, music, movies, school (that goes without say) and we both played the slide trombone in band. Our quote was, "the low brass gets no respect". We didn't care how stupid it sounded because it was true. There were about six of us which were Tuba players, Baritone players and of course the Trombone players. I remember we were excited when we had ten low brass members. What more do you expect from a small school. When Mike and I were catching up it was like the past five years never happened. It seemed as if it was just last week when we spoke. We were talking up to the early hours in the morning over the things we always do. We even spoke about some things that I've written about on this blog and we agreed on a lot of things. That was pretty interesting because he and I would usually go 8 for 10 on the agreement department. It was 10 for 10 the other day. 

Then there was my best friend Vince. He and I also met in the sixth grade. We became really good friends that winter during CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) basketball. From there our friendship grew and we talked about the same things Mike and I talked about. There was even one time when Vince and I were interested in the same girl during our Freshman year of high school. We didn't get angry or competitive with each other. It turned out some other guy started dating her and that was the end of it. We hung out together all the time and on weekend Vince, myself and our friends were always together. School events, outside social events, and whatever else that would be brought to our attention. We haven't spoken to each other in about 3 1/2 years. We ended our friendship on rough terms. To sum it up briefly, things had to be his way or no way. He had to be controlling and be the center of everything. He was even telling me how I should live my life. I'm not talking advice, I'm saying he actually told me what I should do. I gave him the benefit of the doubt at first but things got worse and worse. There wasn't any other way around it so I disconnected myself from him. I wasn't the only one, his own cousin didn't want anything to do with him. He can handle him now but only in small doses. When he added me as a friend on Facebook I thought that since there's been some time maybe we could patch things up. Within 24 hours of accepting his request I removed him from my group of friends. Obviously things weren't any better and he was the same. He was pushing pro Obama agenda down my throat and I didn't want to put up with it. 

I have a system. I use Twitter for politics and whatever and Facebook is for keeping in touch with my real friends. I keep them separate because my friends either have the same views as me, different views or they don't care. I could ignore Vince's postings but at the same time he needs to be corrected on some of the things he says. I didn't want to annoy my friends with that and took the higher road once again. I quote Linus Van Pelt, "There are three things you should never discuss with people; politics, religion and the Great Pumpkin".

What I'm getting at is people change for the better, people change for the worse and then you have the people who don't change at all. No matter what happens you should keep in touch with people you really care about. The people that matter most to you help makes you the person you are. We are all different but there are similarities that makes us connect with each other and from that friendships are formed. Today is September 11, 2009 and eight years ago politics and current events didn't matter to me. Before that day my biggest concern was trying to understand Chemistry and wanting to ask the cute girl I saw in halls out on a date. There's still that occasional cute girl that still pops up every so often but now I'm more concerned about politics and world events. I'm focused on the worries of the country and the world. Today I ask you to put aside your differences and ask what really matter to you? Take a chance and reach out to people you haven't spoken to in a long time. You might regret it and you might not but at least you are putting fourth the effort. You are demonstrating that you are willing to put aside petty differences. If the other person doesn't share your motivation then try again in a year or two.

This day will forever be burnt in my memory. It's when I saw the world differently, it was a day we were afraid, we didn't know what was going to happen. The only thing we knew was that we would get revenge on the Muslim extremists that attacked us. We waved the American flag proudly and weren't afraid to show our pride to be a country of freedom. What's happened since that day? Why is everything politics? Now even talking about cars is politics because our government is a major share holder of General Motors and Chrysler. I ask you to put aside your differences and when you reach out to others don't push your views down their throats. Treat each other like the friend that you remember them to be and maybe you can regain sight into the type of person you really are.