Post by Canada Cowboy on Apr 1, 2009 16:49:26 GMT -8
This is a piece I wrote on Fictionpress. I thought I'd post it here to get some discussion going on.
*****
Which word in the English language do you considered the most abused one? That is, which word is used so often and in such inappropriate situations that one can almost say it is being misused? While many of you may have different opinions of it, and I do respect each one, you may find the one I choose shocking. No, it’s not a swear word, nor is it a curse word either. In fact, it’s a word that many may find appealing, or even want to associate with. And it is under this premise that I deem the word “friend” to be the most misused and abused word in the English language.
On what premise do I believe that “friend” has such negative connotations? Isn’t it true that everyone wants more friends? Isn’t it true that being friends with someone is considered a positive thing? On the surface, both of these answers are true, but they are also valid in supporting my argument that “friend” is become somewhat of a dubious term. To understand this better, we must go into a discussion on what one considers a friend. Nowadays, we find people who often call anyone they know a “friend” and that they have positive feelings for each other. You met someone in summer camp and spent a week or two with them, they’re your friend. You took swimming or skating lessons and the person who performed worse than you asked you for advice, they’re your friend. I’ve even seen situations where it was the first meeting of an interest club, and immediately a new member pulls out pen and paper, demanding everyone’s email addresses so they can contact each other should they quit, all in the name of friendship. Are all these realistic?
For starters, friendship isn’t something that is bestowed upon a person. One cannot, and should not, expect friendship to be unconditional right off the bat. To be realistic, friendship must be achieved, and to successfully do so requires two main things: trust and respect. One doesn’t just trust and respect a person for who they are without being able to judge how that person operates in certain circumstances. While it is true that Robert Fulghum once said, “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten,” in other words, principles we learned in ECS apply to life in general, it is about how well these principles are applied in order to decide whether a person deserves trust and respect. For example, everyone wants others to share, show kindness, take responsibility for their actions, and so on. But when the situation is reversed, and it is others who ask one to do the same, some people do not necessarily get it done. This is the first step towards a good friendship, and it can be summed up as a variation of the Golden Rule: if you ask others to act or behave in a certain way, you must be willing to act or behave that way first. If one cannot even hold oneself accountable to one’s actions, what right does one have to ask others of the same thing? Without the mutual interest, no friendship is ever possible.
So how does one tell whether trust and respect has been gained? In reality, there is no easy answer, as each person values different things. Just the fact that one person likes one thing and the other person likes another, this makes a big difference in terms of how to deal with a good friendship. But to earn trust and respect, one must be able to tolerate the other side’s values, attitudes, and even flaws, to the point where one can relate to them and even show enough interest to the other side’s issues to help that person with them. In the words of Dale Carnegie, one must show “true interest” in another in order to win them over as a friend. By listening, understanding, and even sympathizing with the other side, it makes communication that much easier, as it creates more common ground for the two parties. And of course, if one can give advice the other on how to deal with said problems in a way that doesn’t create a sense of arrogance or resentment, then all the quicker the respect will come. With that, one is well on the way to a friendship.
After trust and respect, then what happens? The short answer would be to give it time, as it requires a certain period of adjustment between the two parties to understand and realize the implications of the friendship. Sometimes, this period of time may be a few weeks, while others may take a few months. There may even be those who don’t give the hints of a friendship until over a year later. But in any case, one cannot simply get up after a few days and declare two people friends, which pretty much remove any of the above stated cases. Those people you spend a two-week summer camp with, or those you take art or writing club with that you see only once a month or so, they can pretty much be eliminated. Unless there is still contact between you and those people out of the club or camp, and the contact is strong enough to let you build trust, it is highly doubtful that the concept of friendship here is very strong, if it is present at all. The main reason for why I say time is important is because there is a period in which the friendship must be built. While the foundation of the friendship, trust and respect, are there, one must continue to place more on top of that. How the friendship can last is based on what happens in the following months, or even years. It is almost like a building, in this sense, where the foundation must give way to the support structures, in which the rest of the building can be formed around it. Without a good support structure, the building would most likely collapse. The same can be said of a friendship, where the support for each other must be present. Without it, it is very difficult to move any further, and may even cause any lingering trust or respect to erode away, bringing one back to zero.
The actual building of the friendship is actually just as tricky, if not trickier than gaining trust and respect. It is here where both sides are testing the waters and seeing how far to take it with the other. It may be a case where the friendship building stage is when one first discovers all the flaws of the other person. While I did mention before that one must show genuine interest in the other person, it may not always be the case that the first impression is one where the other side reveals everything about themselves. While some things will be unraveled early on, others may require some time, and the actual process of friendship building is where those other issues are flushed out. Here is when developing a good rapport comes in handy, as how well both sides know about each other is crucial in strengthening the bond. Being genuinely interested in the other party also means paying attention to small details like birthdays, hobbies, or even pet peeves. Sometimes, asking a small question, or giving a hint here and there may lead to great progress in the building stage, as small steps often lead to more openness without looking desperate. A bit of progress day by day may eventually lead to greater things for both sides, allowing the friendship to blossom and the bond to thicken like never before.
But it is also at this stage where the most risk is taken. Given that both sides are still getting used to one another, it is crucial that each side must be proactive in leading the process. It cannot be the case where one person merely does all the friendly work while the other sits back and takes advantage of the worker. Many times, throughout my personal experience and the experiences of those around me, there are situations where one side did try to reach out, only to find the other not too willing to reach back in return. In almost all the situations, the one reaching out did not give up easily, trying hard to gauge the other side’s interest and hoping for a positive response. While sometimes the other side did budge, mostly the attempt was met with lip service, or worse, outright resistance. In cases like these, it might be best to analyze one’s efforts. Is everything done to make the other side feel comfortable? Is there a situation where the efforts just weren’t enough? Or is it truly that the other side is not interested, or is not keen on a friendship? Using a more personal example, it took me six months to get most people in my Grade Five class to like me. Save for one person, nobody in that class truly accepted me, but after two-thirds of the school year had gone by, my efforts finally paid off. So while it may be frustrating when things don’t work out, there can always be some progress.
But there is always that dreaded situation: what happens when after a bond has been made, it gets broken? What happens if one gets into a fight with a friend and ends up splitting with them, temporarily or permanently? Under this situation, one must ask two questions. The first is whether the friendship was strong to begin with, as a truly strong friendship is very hard to break. While there is a saying that said, “It takes a second to break a friendship, but years to repair it” one might want to know that a true friendship is a very strong bond, and if the friendship is formed right it cannot be broken in a second or with one incident. If the bond is indeed broken, then perhaps it was weak to begin with. I did mention before that sometimes it takes a while before a bond appears, so might it be a situation where the bond was still weak, causing a breakage? In that case, it may be more difficult to salvage, as there is very little to work with to begin with, and it will be back to the beginning. And given that trust and respect are harder to earn once they have been lost, it will require more work to get anything going again.
The second question will be if the friendship is indeed strong, who or what even sparked the fallout? Here, we have to be very careful not to turn a possible reconciliation scheme into a blame game. Certainly, when two people had a spat, the first instinct is to assign blame. Sometimes, even weeks after the incident, there is that urge to say “if only you didn’t do such a thing.” Before this happens, stop and remind yourself of another old saying: it takes two to tango. Anytime two people are in a fight, both sides must take responsibility of their actions. While on the surface it might be easy to assign blame, it is actually more difficult to pinpoint the problem. Given there are two sides to every story, it may not be the case that an agreement will come easily. Often times, it may require the presence of a third party to be the “sober second thought” so to speak. But the main thing is never to let one’s emotions take control of the situation. Even if one say to the other side that one has gotten over the event, think it through carefully, as one may still behave in a way that evokes memories of the event, may the correlation be direct or indirect. To take responsibility of one’s actions require a lot of soul searching, and the best way to show the other side one’s sincerity in wanting to get back together is to tell the other side what conclusions one has drawn in the soul searching exercise, so that both sides can have a new understanding of each other, and sometimes, even the root cause of the spat.
And it is often here that a true friendship is tested, and will separate those who truly want to continue the friendship, from those who merely pay the word lip service just to hear a good word. Many people, during a spat, may become withdrawn, and may refuse to discuss the issue openly for a while. While this is normal for most people, it cannot and should not be the only option one turns to during a spat. One explanation I heard from my discussion with other writers is that after a spat, some people just can’t move on from an event as they “just can’t forget the event” because it is too traumatizing or painful for them. While this does indeed have merit, and certain people may take longer to recover from an argument, I believe that whether a person can get past an argument with a friend is based on how badly they want to move on. If a friendship is strong to begin with, the two sides will do whatever it takes to pull back together.
And part of that stems from an understanding that no friendship can ever be perfect, and it is immature for anyone to believe that even between friends things can always work out properly. Arguments, disagreements, and even criticism are natural in friendships, and being able to tolerate and see through the differences are what count the most here. While it is also true that some people will tend to start fresh by cutting all ties with the other party, I will argue that a strong friendship built on trust and respect will overwhelm any chances of that. As I mentioned before, a strong friendship cannot be cut down with one or two events. By the time two people consider each other as friends, the bond must already have been quite strong. This means there is enough positive feelings between two people to at least want to continue the bond. If it is the case that one side insists on cutting ties, then one wonders how willing this person has wanted to have a friendship to begin with, or even if this person has considered any relationship with the other side a friendship at all.
This is yet another reason why I feel the term friend has been abused so much, as many people refuse to recognize a friendship unless it is to their favour. Often, it is only after a fight that the term friend is even used, in ways like “if you were my friend then you would have never done that to me” even after years of being with each other. If this is the case, then one must truly question the intentions or even sincerity of such people. Here, the concept of friendship is not just misused, but is being exploited for personal gain. While I concede that as humans, it is natural that mistakes are made, even between good friends, it is never right to appeal to hurt and emotions to make others do things. And while this may seem like I am being extremely critical, take note that my two best friends both had a huge fight with me less than a year and a half after we met. And not only did I get over the events, these two are still my good friends today, after over a decade of being with each other. And we certainly didn’t do it by pointing fingers and slamming doors, we did it by doing the little things to pull us back together.
So in conclusion, the word friend is misused and abused mainly because people not only don’t take it seriously, they also don’t take the actual steps to make a friendship work. Merely calling someone a friend isn’t enough, as trust and respect must constantly be built between them. While friends do argue every so often, the word should never be used to control the other side; rather, the two sides should continue to use friendship as a way to pull back together, and build an even stronger bond. It is with these methods that we all become better people, and better relate to the many we will work with in our lives.
*****
So I'll entertain any questions or comments you have then. Have fun Reading!
*****
Which word in the English language do you considered the most abused one? That is, which word is used so often and in such inappropriate situations that one can almost say it is being misused? While many of you may have different opinions of it, and I do respect each one, you may find the one I choose shocking. No, it’s not a swear word, nor is it a curse word either. In fact, it’s a word that many may find appealing, or even want to associate with. And it is under this premise that I deem the word “friend” to be the most misused and abused word in the English language.
On what premise do I believe that “friend” has such negative connotations? Isn’t it true that everyone wants more friends? Isn’t it true that being friends with someone is considered a positive thing? On the surface, both of these answers are true, but they are also valid in supporting my argument that “friend” is become somewhat of a dubious term. To understand this better, we must go into a discussion on what one considers a friend. Nowadays, we find people who often call anyone they know a “friend” and that they have positive feelings for each other. You met someone in summer camp and spent a week or two with them, they’re your friend. You took swimming or skating lessons and the person who performed worse than you asked you for advice, they’re your friend. I’ve even seen situations where it was the first meeting of an interest club, and immediately a new member pulls out pen and paper, demanding everyone’s email addresses so they can contact each other should they quit, all in the name of friendship. Are all these realistic?
For starters, friendship isn’t something that is bestowed upon a person. One cannot, and should not, expect friendship to be unconditional right off the bat. To be realistic, friendship must be achieved, and to successfully do so requires two main things: trust and respect. One doesn’t just trust and respect a person for who they are without being able to judge how that person operates in certain circumstances. While it is true that Robert Fulghum once said, “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten,” in other words, principles we learned in ECS apply to life in general, it is about how well these principles are applied in order to decide whether a person deserves trust and respect. For example, everyone wants others to share, show kindness, take responsibility for their actions, and so on. But when the situation is reversed, and it is others who ask one to do the same, some people do not necessarily get it done. This is the first step towards a good friendship, and it can be summed up as a variation of the Golden Rule: if you ask others to act or behave in a certain way, you must be willing to act or behave that way first. If one cannot even hold oneself accountable to one’s actions, what right does one have to ask others of the same thing? Without the mutual interest, no friendship is ever possible.
So how does one tell whether trust and respect has been gained? In reality, there is no easy answer, as each person values different things. Just the fact that one person likes one thing and the other person likes another, this makes a big difference in terms of how to deal with a good friendship. But to earn trust and respect, one must be able to tolerate the other side’s values, attitudes, and even flaws, to the point where one can relate to them and even show enough interest to the other side’s issues to help that person with them. In the words of Dale Carnegie, one must show “true interest” in another in order to win them over as a friend. By listening, understanding, and even sympathizing with the other side, it makes communication that much easier, as it creates more common ground for the two parties. And of course, if one can give advice the other on how to deal with said problems in a way that doesn’t create a sense of arrogance or resentment, then all the quicker the respect will come. With that, one is well on the way to a friendship.
After trust and respect, then what happens? The short answer would be to give it time, as it requires a certain period of adjustment between the two parties to understand and realize the implications of the friendship. Sometimes, this period of time may be a few weeks, while others may take a few months. There may even be those who don’t give the hints of a friendship until over a year later. But in any case, one cannot simply get up after a few days and declare two people friends, which pretty much remove any of the above stated cases. Those people you spend a two-week summer camp with, or those you take art or writing club with that you see only once a month or so, they can pretty much be eliminated. Unless there is still contact between you and those people out of the club or camp, and the contact is strong enough to let you build trust, it is highly doubtful that the concept of friendship here is very strong, if it is present at all. The main reason for why I say time is important is because there is a period in which the friendship must be built. While the foundation of the friendship, trust and respect, are there, one must continue to place more on top of that. How the friendship can last is based on what happens in the following months, or even years. It is almost like a building, in this sense, where the foundation must give way to the support structures, in which the rest of the building can be formed around it. Without a good support structure, the building would most likely collapse. The same can be said of a friendship, where the support for each other must be present. Without it, it is very difficult to move any further, and may even cause any lingering trust or respect to erode away, bringing one back to zero.
The actual building of the friendship is actually just as tricky, if not trickier than gaining trust and respect. It is here where both sides are testing the waters and seeing how far to take it with the other. It may be a case where the friendship building stage is when one first discovers all the flaws of the other person. While I did mention before that one must show genuine interest in the other person, it may not always be the case that the first impression is one where the other side reveals everything about themselves. While some things will be unraveled early on, others may require some time, and the actual process of friendship building is where those other issues are flushed out. Here is when developing a good rapport comes in handy, as how well both sides know about each other is crucial in strengthening the bond. Being genuinely interested in the other party also means paying attention to small details like birthdays, hobbies, or even pet peeves. Sometimes, asking a small question, or giving a hint here and there may lead to great progress in the building stage, as small steps often lead to more openness without looking desperate. A bit of progress day by day may eventually lead to greater things for both sides, allowing the friendship to blossom and the bond to thicken like never before.
But it is also at this stage where the most risk is taken. Given that both sides are still getting used to one another, it is crucial that each side must be proactive in leading the process. It cannot be the case where one person merely does all the friendly work while the other sits back and takes advantage of the worker. Many times, throughout my personal experience and the experiences of those around me, there are situations where one side did try to reach out, only to find the other not too willing to reach back in return. In almost all the situations, the one reaching out did not give up easily, trying hard to gauge the other side’s interest and hoping for a positive response. While sometimes the other side did budge, mostly the attempt was met with lip service, or worse, outright resistance. In cases like these, it might be best to analyze one’s efforts. Is everything done to make the other side feel comfortable? Is there a situation where the efforts just weren’t enough? Or is it truly that the other side is not interested, or is not keen on a friendship? Using a more personal example, it took me six months to get most people in my Grade Five class to like me. Save for one person, nobody in that class truly accepted me, but after two-thirds of the school year had gone by, my efforts finally paid off. So while it may be frustrating when things don’t work out, there can always be some progress.
But there is always that dreaded situation: what happens when after a bond has been made, it gets broken? What happens if one gets into a fight with a friend and ends up splitting with them, temporarily or permanently? Under this situation, one must ask two questions. The first is whether the friendship was strong to begin with, as a truly strong friendship is very hard to break. While there is a saying that said, “It takes a second to break a friendship, but years to repair it” one might want to know that a true friendship is a very strong bond, and if the friendship is formed right it cannot be broken in a second or with one incident. If the bond is indeed broken, then perhaps it was weak to begin with. I did mention before that sometimes it takes a while before a bond appears, so might it be a situation where the bond was still weak, causing a breakage? In that case, it may be more difficult to salvage, as there is very little to work with to begin with, and it will be back to the beginning. And given that trust and respect are harder to earn once they have been lost, it will require more work to get anything going again.
The second question will be if the friendship is indeed strong, who or what even sparked the fallout? Here, we have to be very careful not to turn a possible reconciliation scheme into a blame game. Certainly, when two people had a spat, the first instinct is to assign blame. Sometimes, even weeks after the incident, there is that urge to say “if only you didn’t do such a thing.” Before this happens, stop and remind yourself of another old saying: it takes two to tango. Anytime two people are in a fight, both sides must take responsibility of their actions. While on the surface it might be easy to assign blame, it is actually more difficult to pinpoint the problem. Given there are two sides to every story, it may not be the case that an agreement will come easily. Often times, it may require the presence of a third party to be the “sober second thought” so to speak. But the main thing is never to let one’s emotions take control of the situation. Even if one say to the other side that one has gotten over the event, think it through carefully, as one may still behave in a way that evokes memories of the event, may the correlation be direct or indirect. To take responsibility of one’s actions require a lot of soul searching, and the best way to show the other side one’s sincerity in wanting to get back together is to tell the other side what conclusions one has drawn in the soul searching exercise, so that both sides can have a new understanding of each other, and sometimes, even the root cause of the spat.
And it is often here that a true friendship is tested, and will separate those who truly want to continue the friendship, from those who merely pay the word lip service just to hear a good word. Many people, during a spat, may become withdrawn, and may refuse to discuss the issue openly for a while. While this is normal for most people, it cannot and should not be the only option one turns to during a spat. One explanation I heard from my discussion with other writers is that after a spat, some people just can’t move on from an event as they “just can’t forget the event” because it is too traumatizing or painful for them. While this does indeed have merit, and certain people may take longer to recover from an argument, I believe that whether a person can get past an argument with a friend is based on how badly they want to move on. If a friendship is strong to begin with, the two sides will do whatever it takes to pull back together.
And part of that stems from an understanding that no friendship can ever be perfect, and it is immature for anyone to believe that even between friends things can always work out properly. Arguments, disagreements, and even criticism are natural in friendships, and being able to tolerate and see through the differences are what count the most here. While it is also true that some people will tend to start fresh by cutting all ties with the other party, I will argue that a strong friendship built on trust and respect will overwhelm any chances of that. As I mentioned before, a strong friendship cannot be cut down with one or two events. By the time two people consider each other as friends, the bond must already have been quite strong. This means there is enough positive feelings between two people to at least want to continue the bond. If it is the case that one side insists on cutting ties, then one wonders how willing this person has wanted to have a friendship to begin with, or even if this person has considered any relationship with the other side a friendship at all.
This is yet another reason why I feel the term friend has been abused so much, as many people refuse to recognize a friendship unless it is to their favour. Often, it is only after a fight that the term friend is even used, in ways like “if you were my friend then you would have never done that to me” even after years of being with each other. If this is the case, then one must truly question the intentions or even sincerity of such people. Here, the concept of friendship is not just misused, but is being exploited for personal gain. While I concede that as humans, it is natural that mistakes are made, even between good friends, it is never right to appeal to hurt and emotions to make others do things. And while this may seem like I am being extremely critical, take note that my two best friends both had a huge fight with me less than a year and a half after we met. And not only did I get over the events, these two are still my good friends today, after over a decade of being with each other. And we certainly didn’t do it by pointing fingers and slamming doors, we did it by doing the little things to pull us back together.
So in conclusion, the word friend is misused and abused mainly because people not only don’t take it seriously, they also don’t take the actual steps to make a friendship work. Merely calling someone a friend isn’t enough, as trust and respect must constantly be built between them. While friends do argue every so often, the word should never be used to control the other side; rather, the two sides should continue to use friendship as a way to pull back together, and build an even stronger bond. It is with these methods that we all become better people, and better relate to the many we will work with in our lives.
*****
So I'll entertain any questions or comments you have then. Have fun Reading!
