Are you a ‘fair weather friend’?

The late Dale Carnegie, founder of the internationally famous course on public speaking and human relations, once said, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

It has been said that we all need friends, and even more importantly, friends need us.

How many friends do you have? Stop and think about this question. Do you have even one true friend that you can count on if you really need help and someone you know for certain would not let you down? I have several true friends I believe I can count on. However, we don’t really know until that time comes.

It has been my experience over the past several years that when I have needed help I have had many people who I thought were friends desert me. On the other hand, I have had other people who I did not know were my friends right there when I needed them most. Have you found this to be true in your life?

A conversation I had some time back brought these thoughts to mind. One day I was having lunch and I met a woman named Mildred Ward. Somehow we were talking about friends, and she told me about a woman she knows who complained about not having any friends. Mildred went on to tell me why this was true.

One morning at about 2 a.m., the woman’s telephone rang and on the other end was an elderly woman who had fallen in her home and couldn’t get up. She had at least someone she thought was her friend and asked her to come to her house and help her. Do you think she went? Well, the answer was no. It was too far. At least that’s what she told her.

When the woman complained to Mildred about not having any friends, Mildred said, “I told her to her face the reason you don’t have any friends is because you don’t know how to be a friend. You are a fair weather friend.”

When you think about it, this is so true. Most of us can be a friend as long as the sun is shining and it doesn’t cost us anything, but when friendship begins to cost us something, it has a way of setting the record straight. At this point the truth comes out and we are either a true friend or a fair weather friend.

I received a phone call from a woman a while back who was not even a close friend. She said, “Bill and I have had an accident, can you come get us?” She told me where they were.

At this point I am trying to make it simply this: If you want to have some true friends, be there when someone who calls you their friend and truly needs you.

He’s the kind of friend you can depend on, always there when he needs you. Author Unknown.

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