More about friends...
I've been doing a lot of thinking about relationships...friendships in particular. What separates true friendship from acquantainces, how you negotiate disagreements and anger, personal weaknesses and irritations and the host of other things that come with clashes of personality. As I said in a previous entry, friendships are not like romantic relationships nor are they like family. Friends are not people you have to keep around, you can change them without guilt or hesitation. For good reason of course.
My area of thinking tonight is personal weaknesses and how they affect your relationships. How far do you let someone let their personal weaknesses or issues affect your relationship with them? Sometimes people let their insecurities or weaknesses shape their interaction with others around them. How much of that is ok? Can too much of it be abusing the relationship? Where does it become abuse? Where does a personal quirk become an inconvenience, an irritation in itself or something you just can't take anymore? How much can you push your friends to take from you? Friends are weird that way. They will be with you before and after the worst of romantic relationships, the worst of family battles, yet they are not necessarily closer than the significant others or the family. I feel like everyone deserves a chance, but at a certain point enough is enough. You have to treat those around you with a certain amount of respect - which involves a certain amount of surface level behaviour as well as a certain amount of loyalty. You need to treat those around you with dignity, no matter how bad the circumstances. You need to be their friend without judgement, without condition, and be able to accept them whole - the way they are - with flaws and mistakes. But when does it get to the point where you can no longer accept them that way? When you realize you no longer have anything in common with them, and your friendship was limited to certain circumstances and situations? This is a sticky issue. Everyone has their own way of deciding what is or is not acceptable. Usually childish is the "unfriending" - the divorcing or breaking up with friends. I once was "unfriended" over email - a double whammy as any kind of breakup over email is lame...but a friend one is even worse. Anyways this is just a thought I thought I'd throw out there...just because :)
My area of thinking tonight is personal weaknesses and how they affect your relationships. How far do you let someone let their personal weaknesses or issues affect your relationship with them? Sometimes people let their insecurities or weaknesses shape their interaction with others around them. How much of that is ok? Can too much of it be abusing the relationship? Where does it become abuse? Where does a personal quirk become an inconvenience, an irritation in itself or something you just can't take anymore? How much can you push your friends to take from you? Friends are weird that way. They will be with you before and after the worst of romantic relationships, the worst of family battles, yet they are not necessarily closer than the significant others or the family. I feel like everyone deserves a chance, but at a certain point enough is enough. You have to treat those around you with a certain amount of respect - which involves a certain amount of surface level behaviour as well as a certain amount of loyalty. You need to treat those around you with dignity, no matter how bad the circumstances. You need to be their friend without judgement, without condition, and be able to accept them whole - the way they are - with flaws and mistakes. But when does it get to the point where you can no longer accept them that way? When you realize you no longer have anything in common with them, and your friendship was limited to certain circumstances and situations? This is a sticky issue. Everyone has their own way of deciding what is or is not acceptable. Usually childish is the "unfriending" - the divorcing or breaking up with friends. I once was "unfriended" over email - a double whammy as any kind of breakup over email is lame...but a friend one is even worse. Anyways this is just a thought I thought I'd throw out there...just because :)
Labels: Thoughts on Life
1 Comments:
At 1:46 PM,
Jeetan said…
There was a great Taoist philosopher named Chang-tse who once wrote a statement I have always found to be a valuable truth:
"When a stranger walks by and steps on your foot, an apology is a necessity, but when your mother does, no words are necessary."
Thus is the difference between strangers, acquaintances and family. Friends, on the other hand, are somewhere in the middle. A long friendship essentially becomes like family. The difference I guess is that sometimes "words are necessary". Sometimes people have to realize their non-considerations, and sometimes people have to just accept that "words are NOT necessary". Somewhere in that mix is a fine balance which determines what kind of "friendship" one has.
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