As the old saying goes, “No man is an island”; we all need companionship to complete us. Moreover, nowadays, we can even profess to have many friends. The social networking tools that are available to us made it easier for us to keep in touch and connect to our friends as well as to get to know many new friends around the world without even the need to meet them face to face in real life. We socialize with people whom we call friends all the time, but can we say that friends are the most valuable thing in our lives? In my humble opinion, I don’t think so. Friends are very important, yes, but there are many more important things or people in our lives, namely our family members, our health and our own personal development.

Blood is thicker than water. This idiom explains the importance and significance of our family members; the bond that we share is so much stronger than the relationships we have with others. Friends may accompany us when everything is fine but there are very few friends who will stay back and go all out for us when the going gets tough. Our family, on the other hand, will never leave us in a lurch; no matter how difficult it is, they will try their level best to see us through the rough patch in life. In order words, we can always count on them to be there for us. Moreover, there are some friends who might have bad intentions and who might do things that can harm us to serve their own interest, but that is seldom heard of among family members. Family members will not normally turn against each other to their own advantage, but will normally be at the lookout for each other. Hence this complete trust, strong bond, and unconditional sacrifices, love that we have with our family members are uniquely precious and cannot be really found and experienced with our friends.
           

On the other hand, our health should be more important than our friends. Friends may engage in activities that may bring negative effects to our health, for instance, smoking, taking drugs, partying and hanging out till late at night, or even engaging in sexual immorality, but we must be wise enough to know that our own health is far more important than pleasing our friends. If we are sick, most of the time, our friends who might have encouraged us to join in those activities will not be the ones who will stay back to nurse us back to health.  Thus, we must always remember, compared to friends, our health is very important because we need it to enjoy a quality life, to fulfill our goals and to pursue our dreams.
           

Lastly, our personal development is also more important compared to friends. We need to always improve ourselves, and in this, our friends play a major role in influencing and shaping who we are. Hence it is crucial for us to be selective in our choice of friends. We must surround ourselves with people with positive qualities and good personalities or attitude that can help us to develop a well-rounded character instead of having bad associates who can tarnish our reputation or be a bad influence to us, for example in the use of vulgar words or in playing truants. We need to understand that although they might be exciting and fun to be with, our personal development is more important, and it is our responsibility to make sure that no one deters us from what we need to develop ourselves constantly in life, namely to continue improving our knowledge and skills, to be a person with praiseworthy qualities and to be a person who can contribute to the society.
           

Hence, despite the importance of friends, I cannot agree that friends are the most important thing in our lives. It is because having a friend can be a boon or a bane depending on how selective we are. However, this does not mean that they are unimportant! They are an integral part of our lives, but we need to be balanced in our view of friends, and make sure we know what is more important when making decisions in our lives.