KCAT CAN: What Would My Life Be Without Friends?

People come and go in this lifetime. Some merely pass us by. Some stay with us for a little while. Some leave as quickly as they come. However, when real friends come, they stay and never leave.

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While I was writing this article, I missed these girls:

So I invited them for dinner..

Lea, Pau & I often use the "everything has a reason" phrase to comfort ourselves whenever things don't go our way.. Those were the days........ :P

What would my life be without friends?
by Maria Kathrina Lopez Yarza
September 14, 2010


MANILA, Philippines – People come and go in this lifetime. Some merely pass us by. Some stay with us for a little while. Some leave as quickly as they come. However, when real friends come, they stay and never leave.

The people I had met along my journey have stayed to become my true friends and have remained by my side all through these years. My friends were the kids from our neighborhood whom I joyfully played with.


In elementary, my friends were my classmates whom I got to play with during recess and lunch breaks.

Then I grew up and became more conscious of the world outside home and school. I gradually realized that friends are not just playmates but people whom I can count on. They are the people who are always there for me and with me through the ups and downs. They are my loving and supportive family.

The diploma that I received when I graduated from secondary school culminated four years of strife; but more than that, I had gained more than 60 precious friends from my batch, and whom I still get in touch with to this date. I will forever be grateful to my group of best friends — my ‘barkada’ — whom I often get the chance to hang out with. I can rightfully claim that the strong bond of friendship that has been developed between us is not limited to the four corners of the classroom. Ten years after graduation, we have sustained a dear relationship amongst us.

As I reached a new phase in college life, my horizon expanded. I encountered people from different walks of life. I mingled with unique individuals with diverse personalities and who came together to share a common interest — art.

Looking back in time to the kids that we were from our neighborhood, we had grown older, taller, and if I may say, a lot wiser. With no more Barbie dolls to play with, no more ruined rubber slippers from playing ‘piko’, ‘tumbang-preso’, ‘patintero’, and so on, our friendship has remained intact. I am proud of it. We never grow tired of each other. We may be busy now tending to each of our own lives, yet, we make sure that we get to see each other’s face as we walk past each other’s house.

My friends are one of the biggest influences in my life. My friends Lea, Pau and I are often together and talk endlessly about the greatness of life, as well the numerous problems and predicaments that life brings. When life seems not to go our way, we tell ourselves that “Everything has a reason.

Everything has a purpose. If it is meant to be, it will happen to be. If it is not meant to be, then there must definitely be a good and valid reason behind it.” Our source of comfort comes from trying to see everything in a positive manner. It is a good thought, for it helps us cope well with the uncertainties, choices and struggles of our daily living.

Now that the kids in the neighborhood had grown older, including me that is, we are too old to join the kids now in the games. But one good thing though is that we are now the organizers of the annual Christmas party. Remembering how it has given me so much happiness over the years, it is now my goal to make these kids feel the happiness that I felt. There are no barriers when sharing happiness is concerned. Not my disability, not my limitations. I can give happiness. These kids are my friends.

Just as countless friends have given me overflowing happiness over the many years I, as a true friend, will share joy with them in my own small way, and in my own big way.

My friends make my life worth living.