I own a few head of cattle which are housed at our family’s rural homestead in Zimbabwe. Traditionally, my family handed down a few heifers to me which calved and as a result the herd grew over time. With each new calf my personal net worth goes up and, therefore, over time the size of the herd grows. The tricky part, however, is that as the herd grows it becomes harder to manage. It requires more land, more supervision and more labour. Thankfully, the economies of scale are such that it can take a long time before one reaches the point where more resources are needed to manage the herd. At that point, because we have a finite amount of land, we have to make a choice as to look for more land and more resources or trim the size of the herd down to a manageable number. Typically, we decide to reduce the size of the herd as the most pragmatic option.
So the question then arises as to which cattle should go…and by go I mean typically to the abattoir to become delicious free range farm style beef…and which should stay. Typically, the older beasts get the chop (pun intended) with those cows that are yet to bear calves or still have potential to bear more retained. This is a winning strategy as once the older cattle are offloaded, the proceeds are typically enough to manage the balance of the herd making the whole exercise self funding.
Those of you who have read my blogs before will know that this blogpost really is not about cattle. This time it is actually about friendships and relationships. I was extremely grateful and surprised after a recent traumatic event that many friends I had not had contact with in years went out of their way to support and help me and family. The investment into the relationship on either side had been minimal, however, the returns exponential. At the same time, I noticed a trend of people who were present in my life but inconsistently so who were aware of my situation, but did not make any effort to reach out or assist in any way.
Rather than being upset or judgemental I was actually curious as to what was really going on and I went painstakingly through my entire phone contact list of people to try and remind myself why people were there. My ultimate insight was that there were a group of people I was holding onto a friendship or relationship with when, for whatever reason there certainly was not one. I was able to identify a list of people as an example, who only contact me when they need me to be a reference when applying for a job. There were also those who never responded to any communication or messages for days, weeks or never at all.
I took a chance and deleted the numbers of every person whom I thought was not and would likely not maintain a relationship with me over time and left it at that. Of that list not a single person over a year later has made any sort of contact. The herd has been culled but it has meant that the energy I spend on maintaining friendships is now re-invested in people where we both will likely get some return. This is all very dramatic I know but in a world where people drift into one’s life from time to time I certainly think that quality will beat quantity every time.
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