Friday, September 18, 2009

The essence of friends and friendship

  • A friend is a person who understands me. He knows when I am feeling bad and why I am feeling bad. He tries to genuinely know the reasons behind and makes an attempt to help me.
  • He seldom needs any explanations for my behavior because I know he understands me and so I don't need to make an attempt to explain the why.
  • He is somebody with whom I can speak my mind without any fear - fear of backbiting, betrayal, rejection and fear of sundry other consequences. He is somebody in whose presence I exist as me.
  • He may not share my interests and my likes but he neither discourages me from pursuing them nor belittles and disparages them.
  • He makes an effort to know why I like what I like and why I dislike what I dislike. He expects me to understand him, his likes, interests and tastes.
  • Expectations - they confuse and confound. But with good friends, it is fair and good to expect consolation and soothing words in times of despair.
  • The true test of a good friendship is the test of time and understanding. Years may pass, but the qualities in a good friend that endear me to him never change and it takes little time to catch up on lost time.
  • A good friend is almost always a good listener too. This is another test that can be applied to this bonding.
  • A friend would be sensitive to my feelings. He would try to think through things from my perspective.
  • A friend would not have a self-interest that conflicts with my genuine intentions.
  • Friends don't keep secrets from each other unless those are the kind of secrets that they would themselves be unwilling to confront.
  • Friendship gets complex with diminishing innocence. Consequently when there is scope for power struggle and one-upmanship, it doesn't thrive.
  • There might be some instances when friendship might not be fair in terms of expectations getting skewed. In my opinion, a good friend will always realize when I am expecting a little more from him and would rise to the challenge.
If this reads like an ideal list, I think it is meant to be. In this age of fast evolving relationships, friendship is something that is getting defined by social networking sites. What a truly sorry state of affairs we find ourselves in!

3 comments:

monica said...

nice to read and feel great about friends around.. But why on earth do we need a design document for friendship?

RAVISHANKAR said...

Good post... but nowadays friendship is like a Selling stock in shop.At least for god's sake it should be divine and understood by fellow human beings.

Shiva said...

@ Monica:

Just to refer in moments of doubt :)

@ Ravi:

Everything is up for sale!! Pathetic.