choose friends who are not just nice

Everyone can be nice. It's easy, like baking brownies from a box. But niceness, like artificial sweetener, is a flavor that becomes boring, bland, all too quickly. Choose, instead, friends with a tad more spice — passionate and intense like chipotle pepper, refreshing like mint leaves, distinctive and intriguing like cinnamon. Choose the ones whose inanities, vulgarities make you laugh so hard you trickle in your pants, the ones whose philosophies challenge your own late into the night, who are worthy adversaries in thought and tongue. Choose the ones “who are mad to live, mad to talk…the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing.” Choose the ones you learn from every time, who illuminate, teach an unfamiliar way of thinking. Choose the ones that inspire you to do more, be more. Choose friends who are not just nice.

Choose Your Friends, Lilian