By Anne Mukei
My little son loves toys, which is not surprising for someone his age. In his young life, he has owned quite a large number, because whenever he sees a toy car he likes, he will insist on having it.
The tantrums that accompany a ‘no’ to his request are not worth the trouble, so his father and I normally give in to his requests.
Just the other day, we bought the boy a new toy car and his father said that he was sure it would not last more than two hours. He was wrong: It lasted a whole week, but is no more. Its plastic pieces are in the toy basket, together with the numerous others that were bought before it.
And just yesterday, I got him a very beautiful ‘police car’ with bright colours and fancy tyres. I wished he would place it somewhere where we could all sit back and admire it, but he chose to play with it, and now it is a shell of its former self.
My son’s toys remind me of friendships and the foundations that they are based on. His numerous broken plastic toys and his few metal and wooden ones that have lasted for years is a classic illustration of many of our friendships.
Over the years, I have met a number of people, some of whom have left a mark in my life, and some who were around for only a moment but whose memories linger, either for good or bad reasons.
There are the friendships that have passed the test of time, and those that die after just a little while. All of them mould us into who we are. Some are so special that we keep revisiting them and derive a lot of pleasure from them.
Then there are those non-starter friendships, those that never take root in the first place, and those that easily break apart like cheap plastic toys. Such friendships have weak seedlings in the first place and hence, their failure to germinate.
Based on this observation, I have concluded that it is important to apply some level of wisdom when choosing friends, for just like the dangerous toys, there are those friendships that are poisonous and only serve to destroy one as a person.
