“A friend loves you, of course; but one who loves you is not in every case your friend. Friendship. accordingly; is always helpful, but sometimes love does one harm.” – Seneca

The most important quality we need to develop, nurture, and perfect to get the most out of the path we are on is discipline. The trouble with applying discipline to our lives is that discipline is a hard operating system. Discipline will chastise us when we allow our emotions to dictate our actions. Discipline will remind us when we don’t fulfill our obligations, when we don’t keep our word. Even with ourselves.

Discipline will get us out of bed and get us moving towards our goals even on the days we would rather pull the pillow over our heads and stay in bed.

Our friends and loved ones aren’t against us, but they do sometimes fight against the discipline. They tell us it is going to be alright if we stray from the path a little bit. They encourage us when we allow our emotions to dictate our actions. Our friends will forgive us when we don’t fulfill our obligations, even the ones that we have to them.

Our friends love us. But in loving us they allow us to be weaker than we need to be in order to accomplish the things we want to accomplish in this life. We need to be strong enough to love our friends but also strong enough to know when we need to detach and go our own way.

Fortunately, discipline will always tell us the right way to go.

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