Amusing games of frienship
The other day I was reading in someone else’s blog about the proper way of maintaining a friendship. Now, I am not one to criticize nor am I claiming to be an authority when it comes to friendships, but I feel that being someone who has many friends, I have a valuable input to provide about the subject. You know, especially since I felt that this blog needed a little dose of reality about the principles of friendship. So, here we go:
According to the dictionary, friendship is a term used to denote mutually helping behavior, such as exchange of advice, the sharing of hardship, cooperation and support between two or more humans. With the words cooperative and supportive being the key words on the sentence. It amazes me to see how some people are so eager to freely write incoherencies about friendship when they evidently don’t understand the underlying foundation that gives friendship its true meanings.
Like any other relationship involving two parties, everyone must provide a bona-fide effort to make the relation prosper particularly under stressful circumstances. Every side must make an effort to truly cooperate and support the other. It can never be a one way street.
If someone was to ask me to define what a friend is, I’d quickly reply that “a friend is one mind in two bodies”. It may sound cliché, but it is true, indeed. Friends think alike and they do things the same way and they help each other. I once read in one of those chain e-mails, a very refreshing anecdote about friendships, it says that “friends are like piss in your pants, everyone could see it, but only you could feel it”. And that precisely what friends are: people that you can count on when s**t hits the fan.
One good lesson that my father has taught me in life is to choose my friends wisely. Now he hasn’t told me that explicitly, but I can derive that from his actions. A friend will visit you at the hospital, even if he/she detest hospitals. A friend will come to your house and visit you while you are sick and remain there with you despite your constant claims that you are ok. A friend will do things for you that they would not normally do for others. They will do everything in their power to cheer you up when you are down. They will spend the night wiping off your tears after the good-for-nothing - excuse of a boyfriend you used to have, has broken your heart.
It is inevitable that friends will bring drama into the friendship, but they must also bring that warm feeling that makes the relationship work. They would fight with you, but most importantly, they would fight for you. And yes friends can be a pain in the neck, but you are blissfully oblivious to that fact because you prefer to concentrate on the good aspects of the relationship rather than the drama that may accompany the friendship. But if your friends only bring drama and nothing else, then it is harder to ignore those. Friendship is a balance but when this balance is lopsided, then I see the potential for trouble in the relationship.
It is particularly disappointing to see others debating their frustrations in public forum without first having the discretion of discussing those issues in private like adults. And it is yet more irritating to see someone blame one party entirely for their own flaws. It is kind of a lack of tact to see their own inadequacies.
When I was in junior high I did a very interesting experiment for my biology class: put a small mirror inside a fish tank and see what happens. The results were kind of neat. The only fish in the tank saw his reflection on the mirror and started attacking the mirror not realizing that it was its own reflection. Some humans react in a very similar way, they never own up their shortcomings, instead they attack others just like the fish did. The key to resolving a mistake is to first recognize the mistake and then fixing the situation. The blame game is for junior high kids and not for us adults. Remember to never throw rocks in a house with a glass ceiling as you’re liable to get cut.
Now people can go around claiming your “girls” or your “homies” always come before significant others, but then it is also important to denote that those privileges must be first earned, but before they are claimed.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not eliciting your remorse nor am I asking for your apology. Words are cheap, so cheap that I can actually get them from strangers at not cost to me. So keep your words for strangers and your apologies to yourself. Perhaps you know better than I that life is full of its ups and downs.
-- Amusing, the games children play --
Yours truly, Doc.
posted by Doc | 6/12/2007 11:02:00 PM
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