Know Your Tribe

I've heard the expression "your tribe" very often but have never really looked at it in relation to myself. There are so many modern and trendy expressions which disappear after they have been used or over-used.
Find your tribe we are told. What? Doesn't that just mean, know who your friends are? And who are your friends? Friends are people who are there for you in tough times, when you're in a bad place, when you've made a horse's rear end of yourself and can't laugh about it. They know you are more than the mistakes you made, the lousy relationship you're in or the super success of that promotion you got. They know you.
So if that's what finding your tribe means, it's not so mysterious or complicated. Everyone has loads of acquaintances, people they meet for dinner, for coffee, for a trip to the theatre. People they chat to when collecting the kids from school or sport, people who gossip with you at the water cooler. They are not your friends, although they could be if you got to know them better, if you wanted to get to know them better.
Have you been betrayed by people you thought were friends? I know I have, quite a few times. I discovered that someone who I thought was a close friend was going around bad-mouthing me to a neighbour - that neighbour was always so helpful that I was shocked to find out about it - so this was a double-whammy: a supposed friend and a nice neighbour who in fact couldn't say a nice word about me when they got together. I discovered it by accident because my nice neighbour couldn't resist starting to criticize my supposed good friend and when I objected she said "you should hear what she says about you" and she proceeded to tell me, making me realize that she had happily joined in!  I suppose, looking back with the clarity of hindsight, that both these women were unhappy about something in their own lives and they needed to point the finger at someone to take away their own hurt.
So, find your tribe. Be careful who you put your trust in, though. What did that song by the Eurhythmics "Sweet Dreams" say:  "some people want to use you"?
I firmly believe that most people are genuine, kind people. And I've knocked around in this old world long enough to come to that realization. Do I have a lot of close friends? No, I don't. I think that if you go through life and you end up with two people who you can speak every thought as it arises, who will tell you what they think but who won't judge you, you have hit the jackpot in the lottery of life.