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CG ShopWhat does friendship mean to me? |
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| Written by CG Girl |
| Friday, 09 October 2009 19:03 |
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What Does Friendship Mean To Us? By: Heath “CG boy” The words "friends" and "friendship" fly out of our mouths all the time without us ever thinking about it. Now there's nothing wrong with those two words; in fact, they're wonderful concepts. Friendship is the essence of every strong and binding relationship we have. What I mean by essence is that it is the core definition of whatever type of on-going relationship in which we take part; whether it be with a long-term co-worker, a girlfriend, a nanny, a husband, a father or even the town barber back from your childhood. These meaningful relationships are friendships. Friendship is a meaningful relationship. One's relationship with a can of beans would typically not be considered a friendship, well, not unless a cheeseburger is involved. Getting to the point of this writing, the idea of friendship is great, but there is a big difference between saying we have a friendship and actually having one. I witness virtually everyday people boasting about all the friends they have and how important these friends are to them. I most definitely agree on this, but we tend to take that for granted. We often toss our friends to the back of the storage closet until it's convenient for us to take them out and dust them off. We all have our own lives; we're busy. Of course it's not easy, if not impossible, to keep in better touch with all our friends. We can't expect that, but we can keep in mind that friends are more than backup hobbies. At heart we know that's not true. We genuinely love our friends; we just forget it sometimes. We're all guilty of it. I'm definitely no exception to that rule. We forget that we love our friends. There is a way to remedy this dilemma: changing the way we think about friendship. Let's not consider a friend merely somebody we know and with which have shared a smile or two. I also ask that we not consider friendship less than any other type of relationship. As I noted before, friendship is the core of every meaningful relationship; it is every meaningful relationship. Our family members are our friends. Family is full of strong friendships, thus we should not classify friends as something lower. Rather we should grade friendships bye their strength and quality. Instead of labeling all our meaningful relationships in tons of different categories, let's just focus on the strength of each of those friendships. If we simply label everything, they end up getting tossed around and generalized. That's an important point about labeling. A label is a generalization. Relationships are anything but general, so we must try our best to keep that toa minimum. I know I'm going off on tangents here and there, but it is definitely all related and extremely important. Value all friendships. If the people in our lives are dear to us, let us please recognize the value of their friendship. We won't always be able to keep in contact with everybody at all times, but we must always keep them in thought. Let us also not demean friendship as greater or lesser than another. Every friendship is unique. They are so unique, in fact, that comparing one to another degrades all of them to nothing. I'll leave with a quote I came up with awhile back: "Life is defined never by the events that take but only by how they are perceived by each person and how each person chooses to be affected by them." It's all a matter of perception. If we alter our perception of what friendship means to us, all else will follow suit. |
