Being a good friend is hard sometimes...

It’s really hard when you have a friend make decisions that you don’t think is in their best interest; to say something and confront it has got to be a seriously hard thing to do.

In a round-about kind of way of explaining what I’m talking about, what do you do if you don’t agree with the decisions this person is making? What if you have a gut feeling that they are doomed and want to talk to them about it; is it really your place to or should you just not go there?

I know it sounds overly dramatic, but this is the pickle I have found myself in. I have had to contemplate having awkward conversations with a couple of friends lately and am not sure what approach to take... there are so many factors.
If only we could be telepathic and send warnings or messages to our loved ones that would send them down a safer path. Nothing like “hey, don’t go for that person, they’re not good for you” kind of obvious message, just subtle little hints that make them think twice.

We recently had a good friend move to London indefinitely, giving his family and friends just over one week’s notice and basically dropping all of his responsibilities to run away to an imaginary degree/job/life…. (he has high aspirations for himself and didn’t think he could achieve any of his dreams while living in Australia).

We couldn’t really say “you’ve got no concrete plans, no money, and no-one to support you over there” so we just wished him well in the hopes that he will figure his life out while living there (I would have chosen a cheaper place to run away to than London to have a quarter-life-crisis, but that’s just me!).
So I guess that while writing this, I’ve realised that it’s probably best to just be a supportive friend and hope that they are happy with the decisions they make in life. You can’t tell people what to do/say/date/live/work etc, and I’m not trying to force anything on the people I care about – I just wish that sometimes they’d open their eyes and bit a bit wiser to what is going on around them.

I will adopt the new mantra – if you’re happy, then I’m happy – to all my friends from now on. I guess that’s all you can do, right?