Character-Building Day in L.A.

I'm sitting at a cafe on Ventura Blvd in L.A. right now, and I'm realizing that I've reached the top.

Not because I'm sitting at a cafe on Ventura Blvd in L.A., but because I had a character-building day yesterday, and I knew it. 

Situation: The friend with whom I am presently staying, A, was sent an emergency text yesterday from one of her friends. This friend, B, had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend and wanted A to come and get her. B could have come and met us rather than have us come and get her, but A felt that she couldn't trust B to leave the situation on her own: B has a habit of perpetuating her lousy boyfriend situation, and A, in spite of her best efforts, has been unable to change that. 

So, rather than spending my vacation time and A's hours off from work enjoying Venice Beach and the sights of Hollywood, we ended up in L.A. traffic in an Uber car for two hours with a girl who didn't actually need or take full advantage of the help offered by A. In fact, B may have made up with her boyfriend by now.

Character building: Both A and I could have been very disgruntled--We were at first. We were in our beach clothes, the sun had already gone down, and we were sitting in an empty hole-in-the-wall called The Black Sheep in downtown L.A. when A began to apologize and vent about our apparently  fruitless sacrifice for B that day. 

But I stopped her and said, "No. Today was a good day. I think it gave us the chance to realize a few things."

For A, it gave her the chance to evaluate how valuable her own time was and how there are some friendships you simply have to let go of because they no longer give value and, in fact, secrete poison. A said, "You really are the average of the five people you hang out with." A knows now that she doesn't want B to be one of the five people with that kind of influence. "I want to surround myself with positive people," she said. "And you can't help people who don't want to be helped."

That was a lesson for her and a reminder for me. 

Valueless friendships are so easy to hold onto, but they can be deadly to our state of being.

As for me, I managed to spend two hours in a car in an attempt to "help" someone I had never seen before on an day I had hoped to enjoy, without going crazy! At first, I just telling myself to relax, but by the time A and I made it to a dark corner of The Black Sheep (where, by the way, we devoured two of the most delicious hamburgers in the world), I had taken hold of a whole new vantage point. So instead of feeling angry and venting for the rest of the night, A and I were able to change the affect the situation had had on us and realize that we had just experienced an awesome, character-building day.

P.S. And ending up in downtown L.A. after dark turned out to be awesome.

Here are links to some of the delicious places we visited:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-black-sheep-los-angeles

http://www.yelp.com/biz/las-perlas-los-angeles

http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-varnish-los-angeles-2?osq=Las+Perlas