A couple days ago I ran across this quote in an email from Jon Acuff:
“The friends you give your calendar to are vitamins or poisons. The best bring out the best in you, the worst tell you that your worst is best.”
It made me hesitate for an instant, and then it made me hesitate for a good long while. Why? I am the relationship guy. I like doing life with people. It makes me tick. I love it when people want to hang out with me! What is somewhat humorous about that is I am a bit of an introvert and I am recovering from battling with social anxiety disorder since my early 20s. Despite that, I have come to know and value that it is by living in relationship with others that my awkwardness from SAD and my “please just let me sit in the corner” phases can reach a healthy balance, and even push me into new areas of connection. I have experienced first hand what Acuff is saying. I have learned which relationships are vitamins and which have become sneaky slow working poison in my life. Learning the distinction between the two is one of the main reasons I am able to work the way that I do, despite some of the challenges I have faced as far as relationships go.
I have built into my life boundaries to keep the poison from coming too close, but that has unfortunately been a difficult learning curve. Sorting out the life giving and life sapping influences in your life is very important. As a leader it is imperative that you learn this, because you will have people you lead who are life sappers, so you better have friends that are life givers.
The question for me is, am I a vitamin or poison to my friends? I have a few friends, like this web-site’s cofounder Mike, who push me and won’t ever let me believe that my worst is my best. My wife is always on the look out for ways that I am settling (which is very easy to do as an introvert with anxiety issues). Have I learned how to say, in a loving friend way, you can do better? Have I earned the right to ask that question?
I know that I have the potential to be both. Am I emotionally intelligent enough to ask myself which one I am being? I struggle with always wanting to be the “fun” friend. In some sense, that can be a vitamin to others, but in my quest to be the “life” of the party, am I forgetting that I have a biblical responsibility to help sharpen my friends? Sometimes, yes, I really do forget that, and I offer up a pithy quip to help ease a hurt or calm a tension, instead of a well thought out challenge. My friends who value time with me deserve more than the “Don Jones Comedy Cabaret”. They deserve the guy who can look at them and say, you’re doing great, and I think by tweeking this or that you could do better. Once I do that, the Comedy Cabaret is just an added bonus.
Are you a vitamin or a poison to the people who have given you time on their calendar? Don’t ever stop asking yourself that question!
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