Entry made August 24, 2004 : Friends

Yesterday, I was thinking about how we label people as friends. More specifically, I was thinking about how I labeled people as friends vs. how other people label friends. I was generally much more reserved in handing out the title of Friend. The good thing about this is that I was well protected from being hurt by friends. The bad thing is that I had very few friends.

Here's the order of how I would label people starting with the least amount of acquaintance.

1. This person that knows someone I know - This is a person that has been talked about by someone I know.
   
   
2. This person I met - Someone has introduced me to this person and I found them interesting enough to vaguely remember.
   
   
3. This person I know - Someone that I run into on occasion and we both exchange greatings and maybe a few pleasantries before going our separate ways and forgetting the encounter.
   
   
4. An acquaintance - Someone that I know and will make at least a small amount of effort to go over and talk to.
   
   
5. This person I hang out with sometimes - Someone that for one reason or another ends up doing things with me. It might be a good friend of a friend that gets invited to all the things that I do. It might also be someone that once in a blue moon calls me, or I call him/her and we do something.
   
   
6. A friend - This is a person that I regularly call and (through means of advancement) regularly calls me. We usually know what eachother is at least doing.
   
   
7. Best friend - This is a person that I can almost communicate with without talking. This person usually not only knows what I'm doing but also what I'm thinking and how I feel about almost any situation.
   
   

You'll notice that the pretext is past tense. Through dealings with people in the last few days I have gotten to rethink my labelling system. Maybe I haven't really rethought it as much as re-evaluated the level of friendship that many people had with me. I realized that I had kept many people on the "acquaintance," or "This person I hang out with sometimes" lists that I should have promoted to friend long ago.

Someone wiser than I said that in order to have good friends, you have to be a good friend. In my attempts to keep people from achieving the title of "friend" I, myself, have not been a good friend. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I can't think of any of my friends that haven't hurt me in one way shape or form. Two things about this statement that I realized.

1. As Donkey says, "That's what friends do. They forgive eachother!"
2. I started looking at many of my "persons I hang out with sometimes" and "acquaintances." Many of them were nearly as close to me as my "friends" and many of them haven't hurt me.

I realized that many people that I haven't acknowledged as friends were actually better friends than some of the people that I labeled as friends. The first case, that I can lay my finger on, that caused me to shelter myself from friends, happened in 4th grade. A bunch of my friends told me I smelled funny and stopped talking to me. These are just kids being kids. Kids tend to take friends for granted and they don't worry about hurting the feelings of other friends. Why would you care? If you are in a classroom with 30 other kids and only 5 are your friends. That's like 6 different groups of friends. And the next year you get 6 more groups of friends to hang out with. As a kid, you have a never ending supply of friends. Who cares if you toss a friend on the side?

This is just the harshness of adolescents. It is almost a rite of passage that we must all endure. How else are you supposed to learn the true value of friendship if you don't get pushed away by the person you call best friend. I think I was quick on the uptake of this idea and learned it right then and there in 4th grade. If you ask me, I did more maturing in that one instant in 4th grade than I did all through the rest of the grades. I tried to make ammends and be friends with these people again but they wouldn't let me. So I adopted the credo of, "Eh, whatever." I went and made new friends.

I had one main friend through all of this. He and I have been best friends (for the most part) since kindergarden. At the time when we started being friends, I, as well as many others, viewed him as a loser. It bothered me a little bit but we still played together almost every day. Occationally we would bring other people into our little group, but they usually only stuck around for a few months. This friend, Brian, was (and still is) one of the best people I know. There were a couple times when I hurt Brian's feelings, but we were almost always back playing again the next day. He always forgave me.

In fourth grade I learned to shrug things off. It wasn't later, until college, that I learned to forgive. Even now, I'm not great at forgiveness. I somehow learned to shrug things off in such a way that I was able to get even. I know now that forgiveness is the key to friendship. Now that I know forgiveness, I can forget the wrongs that friends have raught. These people are supposed to be my friends. Nobody's perfect. If they slipped up and did something that I didn't like, they are still my friends. I was so caught up in the idea that no friend should ever damage another friend that I forgot that the world is an imperfect place. Jesus forgives, why can't I?

This came to me during a conversation with someone that I should have labeled as a friend a long time ago but for reasons unknown (part of which probably being contempt) I have submerged to less than a full fledged friend. I talked to her on the phone a little while ago and had some major realizations.

One of the major realizations is that there are good people out there. I seemed to be looking too far away. There are good people that are close to me. That is a great feeling to have.

A second major realization is that everyone is different. There are no two people that have gone through all of the exact same trials and tribulations. Even identical twins end up having different personalities because something happened to one while the other was going to the bathroom. No two people are alike. I will never meet someone with the exact same beliefs and thoughts that I have. The trick is to find someone that can accept the differences and then do the same. Arranged marriages worked because, over time, the couple learned to accept eachother's differences and love the similarities. AA has this great saying, "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference."

Let me say that quote again a bit bigger because it is an excelent credo to live your life by.

A third and probably most important realization is that I lots of friends. There are many more people out there that have been friends to me even though I have not been acting like a friend to them. Now I know my mistakes and I can fix them. And, because they are friends to me, they will forgive me for not being a good friend to them.

There are better people in the world than me. Luckily I now several of them and by watching them and adapting myself, I can make myself a better person too. That's what the whole point of life is right, to be the best person we can be in any situation.

So with that note, I can say, for the first time in a long, I not only appear happy, but I am happy. And I wish you a good and happy day, week, month, year, and decade. And if you ever need another happy time, I wish you an infinite amount of extra happy times.