Take your friends as fruits in a salad

Fadzayi Maposah Correspondent

We have different friends and we love them for who they are. We may at some point have attempted to change them and then realised that they are a `cast in stone` and our attempts to change them yielded nothing except frustration and possibly dent or damage our relationships.

Look at your friends as fruits within a salad.

Let us take a look at fruits that maybe in in a salad. There is the banana. It is soft and when exposed to air it may become tainted or change colour and not be attractive to those that may want to eat it. It is easy to chew and without much effort one can get to swallowing!

There are many varieties of apples.

There are red apples. There are green apples. There are relatively soft apples and there are crunchy ones that need a bit of energy when it comes to chewing.

Not all apples can make it to the salad, some are better enjoyed cooked.

Some, if consumed as raw can leave one with a bad impression about apples.

A pineapple, beautiful fruit that cannot however be used in a salad unless all the prickly parts have been removed otherwise people eating the salad will end up with blistered tongues. When properly spruced up, the pineapple is a great addition to the salad.

Strawberries add colour to a fruit salad. They can be cut or just be taken whole in the salad.

Too much of the bright colour can however be dominating that the bananas are lost in the salad. There so many fruits that can be put in the salad. Each fruit is unique in its flavour and colour.

It is actually frustrating for an individual who loves water melons to eat apples and expect them to taste like water melons.

I was reading that there are some fruits that should not be combined. Acidic fruits such as strawberries, apples, grapefruits, peaches and pomegranates should not be mixed with sweet fruits such raisins and bananas. This means that some seemingly attractive looking combinations maybe disastrous.

I have had many friends since childhood.

When I was way younger than I what I am, friends were many but the relationships in most cases were short lived. We loved quickly and then soon the love faded and the interests seemed to have changed…Can anyone relate to this point in their life? When you wrote an essay about your best friend only to have a new best friend by the time the essay was returned marked? Looking back now I just smile.

The innocence of childhood…..

During this phase you wanted your friend to be always with you, to always agree with you.

Life is lived forwards but understood backwards indeed! How did we ever survive that phase?

At times one ended up being a replica of the friend or the friend became your clone. One moment you would talk like your friend and the next moment your friend would be attempting to smile like you. Some drama I tell you. It was good while it happened. Then it was like imagining having a twin who never went against you.

Then growing up happened.

I realised that you did not have to be like your friend so that you could be together.

You can maintain your individuality and still be a good friend. Actually that individuality is what makes the friendship appealing. It is about complimenting one another. No cloning. It is also fine if your friend has other friends besides you, you do not `possess` your friend as it were. I also learnt that it is not about the quantity of friendships that you have but the quality of relationships is what is important.

Now I do not spend all the time with my friends but when I have moments with them, those moments are priceless.

Still the concept of friends as fruits in a salad applies. My friends are different and I value those differences.

The differences contribute to the individual that I am. With all my friends I am just myself. I understand that because my friends are different, I have to adapt to the situations that they find themselves in. I have friends who have a calming effect on me just by nature of their personalities and I respect them for that.

I have friends who are such bundles of energy that the moment I am with them I am highly energised. In all my friendships there is great support in all aspects. I understand my friends` strengths and weaknesses as they are. I do not expect orange juice from a banana!

I have become good friends over the years with my menstrual period.

Like some of my other friends who love attention as soon as them show up, I have learnt to accord the menstrual period the due and necessary attention when it pitches up.

There was a time the menstrual period would just pitch up unannounced. It would have me changing my plans as I do when a friend who I have told my door is open for them all the time comes.

Going on hormone replacement as part of a way of managing menopause has enabled me to know when to expect my friend, prepare for her and cope with the issues that she brings.

We are not loveable all the time neither are our friends. At times we can cause our friends unnecessary pain and discomfort, menstruation my friend does that at times.

But because I understand that weakness, it no longer really bothers me.

I take it all in good stride. For other people she causes no pain, its peaceful and calm all the time. We all need our friends, we just have to manage the relationships well, learning from fruits in a salad that each one brings its own flavour.