The many facets of friendship

The subject of friends is always a complicated and difficult debate. We are friends with another person because we do not want to be alone and we want someone to talk to. This is the law of attraction, like attracts like and you have two lonely people who become friends and are never lonely again. However the rule of the world is that everyone moves on once a need is satisfied. There are many hierarchies of need according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and is detailed in psychology. The first of all human need is psychological which is what your body needs to sustain itself. The susequent ones are safety, love/belonging, esteem and actualization. Friends fulfill most of the needs that we have including safety, love/belonging and self esteem. Having friends make you feel good because you know you are not alone in your passage of growth and you belong to a group of friends. This is also the cause of popularity contests between groups of cliques which arises to giving self esteem. Would you feel good if you are among an elite group of people? Of course. You feel powerful and protected. And when you are famous many friends will ensue.

What is a definition of a friend? Someone who entertains you when you are bored? Someone who listens and look up to you? Someone who likes you? From these general questions above, it is easy to classify friends into a few groups that fulfills your psychological need. The first group who are friends who make you feel belonged to a group and loved will entertain you and look after you. This kind of friendship could be a casual one or a close one. Either one is possible but usually it would start off as a casual one. The second class of friendship are friends who make you feel good and that fulfills the first priority in the psychological needs. Judging from our psychological needs, this second class of friends will be considered your "best" friends although for some people, it may not be the case. The more knowing individuals would say that these group of friends are ego boosters and are usually unreal. Why would they go to great lengths to make you feel good. Remember the tv advertisements? Why would they want to make you feel good using their product? Because they want something in return. Everything in this world is based on a give and take mechanism. The second class of friends belong to leaders who usually have a large and heavy responsibility. To enlightened people like the Buddha, these group of friends can illude reality and cause material attachment. These people fear when they could not do something well and may cause their friends to abandon them. Everything has to be perfect to these individuals and this can wreck their lives. Honesty is sometimes not found in friendship and it may take more than a friend to be honest to yourself. The buddha also once said that true spiritual leaders are peerless in the sense that they are not attached to their friends and treat them as people who are undertaking the same spiritual paths. A practice usually done when reciting the buddha's teaching is to make an affirmation to not meet any foolish individuals some of which you may call friends who could cloud your judgement. We ask for good friends who will help us along the way and keeping in mind that our paths are our own to walk and at a point we have to leave our friends behind to search for our spiritual/material path and truth.

posted by Anonymous @ 10:12 AM