TIL That Crisis Are The Best Filter For Friends

You know how it is: you get close to someone. In the beginning it's just that you like to spend time together. And then, occasionally you do some stuff for each other (supporting in tough times or just hanging around). And then, somehow, the whole thing freezes at this level. It hits a plateau.

You still see each other, but the relationship is not really advancing. But it doesn't fades either. It gets stuck in a limbo.

That's the place where the large majority of our friends are inhabiting. That's the area filled with "friends". They're not really friends, but we kinda got used to the idea that we're friends, so, what the heck, we're friends, right?

And then there's a crisis. Some business trouble or some health. And you need support.

Each crisis has two levels.

The first one is disruption. The crisis smashes your entire universe with fury and rips away everything it touches. In this whirlwind, you try to survive. Your focus can't go beyond your immediate, survival needs. And you just try to cope with it.

After a while, this first stage stops. Sometimes as brutally as it started, sometimes it just slowly fades away. But, eventually, it stops.

And here's when the second level of the crisis enters the scene.

This is the level where you are capable to look around again, the "adjustment" level. And now you see who's still with you. And you start to remember who actually supported you during the first level. It's not that difficult because, most of the time, those who didn't aren't even around anymore.

In a silent and clean way, the crisis filtered them away. They're simply not around anymore.

And that's the moment when you put all the pieces together and realize why you needed that crisis. Why your entire universe was shaken apart and why you had to experience that turmoil. Because you had to get rid of the excess.

If you don't assess those relationships constantly, they are growing stale, just like a shell, and that shell becomes heavier and heavier and before you know it it starts to limit your movement and you don't even realize that. You take it for granted. It's ok to have a shell.

Well, not quite. The moment you lock yourself in the sweet prison of your own comfort zone, well, that's the moment when you start to die.

Unbearable as they are, frightening and unpredictable, adversities are, at their core, just trampolines. The lower you allow yourself to go, the more powerful the upward momentum.

And once you went to the lowest of the lowest you realize there's nothing more to do down there anymore and the only way out of that place is up.

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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