The internet is an interesting place. Using various social media and other systems, you can meet people from all over the planet, talk to people ten thousand miles away, without leaving your chair. It’s fascinating how people who have never physically met can become the best of friends from hundreds, thousands or even ten thousand miles away.
I’ve gained many close friendships with people in other countries via the internet. These are people who are now part of my life and I treasure them and their part in my existence as much as my dearest friends that I hang out with regularly.
Recently, I “ran into” one such person, a beautiful woman from Romania of all places, during my travels through cyberspace. I’d say it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever visit Romania. While I’m sure it has it’s charm, and I hear Bucharest is quite beautiful, it’s not a place that jumps to mind when I think of traveling to Europe. Thus, unless something unexpected occurs, our meeting will happen as light traveling over the fiber laid under the Atlantic ocean last decade.
What makes a friend
So if we’re never going to meet, what, really, is a friend? What’s this friendship thing anyway?
The absolute first requirement for friendship is simply this: I care. Or, to be more precise, I care on a deep level about my friend and about our friendship. I enjoy seeing my friends succeed, I take joy in their happiness and I go to efforts to help them when they’re sad or having troubles.
A friend is someone I can talk to about anything without being concerned about how it’ll be received. The more I can just say what’s on my mind, the more solid the friendship. On the other hand, when I have to carefully pick my words, for fear of hurting or upsetting the other person, the less of a friendship I have. The “walking on eggshells or rice paper” phenomenon means there’s no friendship.
In other words, real friends don’t put up barriers to block communication between each other.
A friend is someone that I’d never intentionally harm. It would never occur to me to hurt a friend. That, to me, is a very basic keystone to friendship.
Even more importantly, i’d jump to the defense of a friend. Usually this involves understanding that gossip and chatter about a friend shouldn’t be tolerated.
If a friend is in trouble, my instinct is to want to help them out. Virtually always, that’s simply a matter of being a good listener, hearing what’s troubling them, understanding what’s on their mind, and offering useful advice if needed. And my hand is extended to them if they really do need someone to be there for them.
On the other hand, and this is a very tricky line which mustn’t be crossed, it’s important not to become an enabler. Giving a friend money or aid constantly is almost never a good thing; in general, people shouldn’t need help ALL the time. By the way, an enabler is someone who enables, or reinforces, bad or self destructive behavior. Paying someone to not work, for example, is a classic enabling technique.
A more tricky example is buying an alcoholic groceries; this enables them to use their money for booze. The key question to ask is “am I really helping or am I just feeding their problems”?
A very good friend knows when NOT to help as well. Good parenting, for example, occasionally involves a dose of “tough love”. You might have to let a person work his own way out of a problem because that’s the best answer. A good and true friend understands and recognizes that sometimes the best help isn’t the obvious help.
A friend is someone I want to see, someone I want to be around, and someone I take joy in their company. I never dread seeing my friends.
Trust and honesty
Trust is one of the most important building blocks of friendship. A friend is someone I trust. I trust them not to hurt me, I trust them with my confidences, I trust them not to want to cause harm, and I trust them to use good judgment in our relationship.
Friendship absolutely requires honesty. Lies are barriers to friendship. For example, in a romantic situation, “cheating”, the instant it happens, destroys the friendship. It breaks the basic rule of honesty and trust between friends.
I guess this all sounds somewhat complicated, but it’s really very simple.
A friend is someone I want to be around and whose company I enjoy on many levels; I care for my friends, and want them to be happy and joyful; I want them to do well in life, which requires that I not enable their behaviors which undermine them doing well; I’m willing to listen and to help, and I’m intolerant of others attempting to harm them in any way; I trust them, honor their foibles, and am as honest as possible with them.
Lastly, everything said here’s true coming the other direction. A friend has to feel and act the same way about me. Otherwise, it’s not a real friendship.
And that, simply, is what friendship is to me. Distance, in time and space, doesn’t matter. What matters is the basic feeling and actuality of friendship