A Witty Title.

Karen post recently on just how hard it is to keep up with all your friends. This is something I've been experiencing a lot recently myself. It's inspired this post, although I don't know how related to what she was saying it really was.

I remember a theorem that I was once told about “"circles”" of friends. I can't remember the number of circles, or what they involved, but the idea of a set of concentric circles with me in the middle and my friends scattered about by proximity of relationship is one that sticks with me...

But I'm going to go one step further. I'm going to take this illustration, and add to it, all my priorities. The closer something is to me in the middle, the more time you spend with it. That goes two ways, first because you put more effort into doing it (like say spending time with god would be something I'm putting a lot of effort into. The more I do so, the effort I apply is either to move it closer to the centre of my imaginary diagram, or to reach out to the point where it is. Either to improve my commitment to it, or to make an effort to go out of the way to do it "this once".

The closer it is to the centre, the shorter the distance from me, and that's the second way. Its less effort to spend time doing something your in a habit of doing. People who I meat up with on a regular basis, church, where I'm committed to attending regularly, bible study, quiet times (Ok, yeah, that one needs a lot more effort... to move it in).

If we wanted to take this analogy far too far, we could say things which are touching me in the inner circle are things I do instinctively. You could even add attitudes and the like to this. But I think I'm dragging this too far away from what I'm trying to say, so lets get back to the core of this.

You need to have your priorities. Some things are more important than your friends. God for one. Your own health. The things you are committed to, (the important ones anyway). If your friends are so annoyed at you for not prioritising them over something that is more important to you, its their problem, not yours. Certainly, re-evaluate whether that thing should be more important than them, but if it is, and should, then its up to them to accept what you can give them, or to not.

You can only give your friends what you have to give.

I've reached this point and I have no idea where I want to go from here, So I think this is where I will leave it.

# posted by ChinDoGu @ 19:01