Demands of Friendship

Friendship is a skill that takes work, skill, and determination. It keeps us together, makes us human, gives us comfort and meaning. But what is it, and how do we treat our friends correctly?

Friendship is a recognition of commonality, a recognition of some form of sameness between two or more people. This commonality can be, and often is, anything from living nearby to taste in music to hair color, and it can be a recognition of what we are, or what we desire to be, or a mixture of both. When this appreciation is reciprocated, it is a friendship.

This appreciation of commonality is what starts a friendship, but it is not enough to sustain it. Whatever the start of the friendship, to maintain it requires a give and take relationship, and understanding of balance between each other. One cannot give or receive exclusively. To give without receipt sets up false expectations as we suffer in silence, and to take simply is not friendship, only using.

To treat our friends correctly is, in part, simply what we should do to treat all people correctly. It is easy to "demand" that those close to us accept and understand our anger, our problems. But our friends, too, are of the Divine, and worthy of respect and love both for themselves and their Divine nature. We cannot separate out our friends from that Divine nature and truly consider them friends or ourselves religious people.

Of course, our friends are not simply people off the street. Friends are special, different, and to not understand that would be a lie. Friends are people that can make us stronger and better, or casually cruel, or anything in between. We care about how our friends see us, and we should. Of course, we can use that same power of approval over our friends, as well, and we should. Caring for people, and caring for their approval, is part of being human. We need to feel for each other, and we need to be worthy of being cared for.

So how should we choose our friends, and then how do we treat them? They are related questions. We should choose to associate as much as we can with people that uphold attitudes we find uplifting and moral, to associate with people we like being associated with. We become like those we associate with, over time, so if we allow ourselves to associate with people that are not as we wish to be, we will become lesser than we were.

We need to be the sort of person we would want to be a friend to, willing to share, willing to give, but not being a pushover.

Questions:
What do you give to your friends? What do you receive? Does it change by person? Is it, to you, balanced?
Why is it wrong to expect people close to use to “understand”?
Are the people you consider friends “safe”, or do they challenge you to be a greater person than you are?