How I narrowed down all my acquaintances to just a few friends.

Let me preface by defining ‘acquaintance’ and ‘friend’. Oxford Languages defines acquaintance as — a person one knows slightly, but who is not a close friend.

They also define friend as — a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.

This purpose of this article is to share my story as I felt like I needed loyalty and inspiration in my inner circle. I also aim to inspire anyone who can relate or hopefully adopt my journey into their own, thereby creating a close inner circle of friends.

I’ll began on how I acquired so many acquaintances in my journey. It ultimately came down to agreeableness, lack of leadership/mentorship, addiction, lack of vision, lack of priorities, lack of respect, the need for attention, and the crave for experience. I was lonely. This all began in my middle school and high school years. I was always the kid that was up for anything. Both the good and the bad. I never said no. My father was a staple in my life, but he didn’t guide me properly. After he passed away when I was 16, the little guidance I had was completely gone. I did know him long enough to mock and adopt his addictions. I mistook fear for respect when I was around him. Once he passed, I feared no one which in turn meant I respected no one. My lifelong crave for attention didn’t help with my lack of respect. Lastly, because of the hundreds of different things I did with my father, I sought out experiences in my time with peers.

By no means do I believe I was an actual victim. As a human, my life is all about choices; as a man, my life is all about protecting myself and those around me. I do believe I made bad judgement and failed, respectfully.

By time undergraduate hit, I was doing the same things, just a bit older and more arrogant. I didn’t care about much. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, where I wanted to go, who I wanted to be, what drove me, or why I was even here.

However, there wasn’t a lightbulb moment where I decided to surround myself with real, genuine people. They were all slowly introduced into my life (or already were unknowingly present). I give credit to day-by-day reality creeping into focus. Bars became boring, guys just wanted to drink, girls just wanted empty attention, and I began respecting myself. I realized the attention was empty validation from people who were on the exact same level as me. Not that validation is all that important, but I rather see it from people above me.

I learned to say no and realize that FOMO is a good thing to have. It meant that I was learning to stay disciplined. I don’t want to take credit for my current leaders and mentors, however, I just needed to open my ears. I quit my bad habits. I will admit that I’m still working on an overall vision, but I do want to build my last name into a legacy that will be directly felt by my future great-grand children. I took a step back and realized who still loved me even when I didn’t reciprocate.

So far in my journey, I will attribute my finding my inner circle of friends to accountability. Pushing each other to love and be a positive force in the community each and every single day.

I do believe I still have many more great people to meet, as my transformation is more or less recent. This journey is far from over and everyday I must get 1% better than the previous day.

I now believe I am blessed, and was never depressed.

I hope a peek into my life has inspired you, even in the tiniest way. I look forward to any personal messages in speaking about this article. Thank you.