Friendships Standing the Test of Time... Deeper into the Rabbit Hole
It’s interesting how some friendships blossom and maintain themselves over the course of time. One of my closest friends, Sam, and I only spent one year together during college, but we became life-long friends. At first, he thought I was this young, cocky, punk, which I was, and I thought he was this arrogant Texan. This animosity lasted a few months and we eventually found out that we had some things in common, but our friendship grew out of a mutual respect and admiration for one another. Sam is my wisest friend and the words he pours out is always insightful and refreshing. He’s also a sports fanatic like me, so we can talk about sports for hours. Honest, sincere, raw… crass yet respectful… spiritual yet grounded. I also respect him because he decided to work as a pharmacist before going to seminary and not developing a limited perspective on the world. Many other friends and I have spent more time together and have more experiences built up, but my friendship with Sam will stand the test of time and eternity.
Once you secure that foundation through bonding moments, difficult times together, strong common interests, or mutual admiration, a person can become a friend for life. Sometimes it takes years and sometimes several months. The more experiences and situations that test the friendship and allow you to see the true heart of that person can be enjoyable or disappointing. One of my former colleagues was someone I had great respect for. Bright as hell, nice guy, and had such an untarnished reputation. As we began working together, I thought this was someone I would be friends with. Not close friends since we didn’t have many common interests, but at least a friend. During the course of working with him, I saw a side of him I didn’t respect and found to be disturbing. He was very conscious of his image as a “nice guy” and his reputation to the point of affecting his decision-making as an executive within our company. I found him to be selfish to a degree which made my stomach queasy. Much of this behavior came about during the most difficult times of our company. When you’re in the heat of battle or sh*t hits the fan, I believe these are the times you see a person’s true character come out. After we overcame this period of the company’s growth, he left the firm. I know most of his past and present colleagues believe him to be a “nice guy and standup individual” and this probably will not change until they have gone into the trenches of war with him. I will never work with him again.
At the end of this month I will be standing in my tenth wedding and probably not my last. My close friend, Chung, who I’ve known since second grade is getting married. Just looking back I’ve been blessed with many awesome friendships and experiences that have allowed me to mold me current view on life and friends. My personality just lends itself to making friends easily, but I also believe it is a perspective I learned early in life to have a sincere interest in other people without any pride. I’ve been on various sides of the social square, so I’ve learned how arrogance can hurt a person and discrimination in any form is not beneficial to anyone. I’ve also learned to expect disappointment from friends to a certain degree. I expect people to disappoint me because I have disappointed people. I have learned to become forgiving or accepting of various behaviors and types of friendships. Of course there are behaviors, characteristics, and actions that I will not tolerate from my close friends. I also cannot do it to the degree of people like my father. I respect my father because I believe his patience is almost unlimited when it comes to his friends and people. Even when a friend painfully backstabs him, he still forgives them and treats them well. I would most likely be vengeful and keep a long memory.
Since college when I looked around and saw or heard about these broken friendships and how they unraveled I would become disappointed or sometimes I just think how immature or “high schoolish” the whole situation was. It’s funny because even though most of the people I work with, hangout with, or know are in their upper-20’s and mid-30’s, and some of their behavior seemingly hasn’t changed since high school or even grade school. Broken friendships, petty fights, and bitter hearts still occur well into our 30's... probably 40's and 50's, but I can't write from my experiences yet. It’s amazing that the level of maturity of a fair amount of people hasn’t changed since their youth. Social ineptitude surrounds us all.
In the end, I want to say that the friends that you make in life and the people that you influence are a reflection of how you lived your life and what you treasured. But I know this isn’t necessarily true. Some people just have difficulty in making friends. Some have been scarred by painful experiences. Others might have struck a balance with their careers, so they don’t have time to develop as many close relationships as they want to. Life is complex and how it reveals itself is not always a smooth process. All I can say is that people should cherish every friendship that they have and take the risks when you can to go deeper into that rabbit hole. Or stomp on the ground that you stand on and see who your friends really are and if those are the friendships you want for life. Life is short, so unless you desire to wander for life stake a claim in the land that you want. Expose yourself, bare your soul, and let the seeds grow.
"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow grow, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation." - George Washington
"A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely." - Pam Brown
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 9, 2003
Monday, July 7, 2003
Defining Friendship... Part II
Distorted View of Friendship and Love... Taking the Next Steps
So for whatever reasons a friendship has begun. How that friendship grows is a different story. Some blossom into life-long relationships that stand the test of time and trials of life. Others quickly wither at the first signs of stress. I really believe the values of the individuals, personalities, and quality of interactions help define the strength of a friendship. One of my friends in New York recently lost a few of his close friends and a handful of others since he decided not to go along the path of partying that they were walking. These were his drinking and clubbing buddies for a few years. The majority of them starting getting into cocaine and he just didn’t want to go in that direction, but still wanted to hangout during the other times. They saw it as he was thinking he was too good for them or he was being judgmental since he wasn’t joining them in their cokefests. Conflicts occurred and most of them started to avoid him. So he learned who his true friends were he told me. Those that respected his decision and still wanted to maintain the friendship. There are a couple other situations I know of where party friends in the end don’t stay together because all they had in common was the dancing at night and drunken heart-to-heart talks. Or others that had friendships through sports teams, but outside of it they had nothing in common. As more responsibility occurs in life, priorities change and it can take more of an effort for people to grow a friendship.
I believe another factor in all of this is how our culture has affected our general thinking about love and friendship. Western culture emphasizes self and self-esteem. So a definition of love in the culture I grew up in is to help increase someone’s self-esteem. You show love and friendship by helping them feel better about themselves; being supportive; and giving encouragement. So a fair amount of times I'm the quack shrink for my friends, and they sometimes have problems in expressing concern or telling one of their friends things they don’t want to hear. They don’t want to get involved even if they know it will benefit their friend. Worst is that I might be friends with the same person, so I'm pressured to talk to that person or I myself feel obligated to do it (default megaphone or middle-man many times). Within Western culture, it can be to the point of overemphasizing the positives and pumping up a person's ego… to give props and say, “My friend is so money… he is the mac daddy of all-time… she is so fly!...” But not to tell them they should stop treating their girlfriend in such a way, slow down on the coke or your work will suffer, stop being lazy about your career, can't take advantage of your friends, stop pissing on the toilet seat, stop getting drunk and cheating on your boyfriend...
In Eastern culture, it is more about saving face and giving honor to a friend. Being in Korea over the past three years has really allowed me to experience how people just don’t want to tell others, including their friends, how they really think and feel. Very frustrating work environment too. Anyway, it’s either a passive-aggressive approach or the veiled-message method in communicating to others. Western or Eastern culture, the bottom line is that people want to make other people feel good about themselves, not step on their toes, or value keeping the status quo. This is a distortion of what I believe love is and should be, especially in the realm of friendship.
A pure example of love is between most parents and their child. Parents want what is best for their child and want to see improvement and growth and development. So they will scold the child, teach the child, talk to the child, comfort the child, etc. In a general manner, I believe the same should be for friends. Love between friends should be about doing what is best for someone, even if it means being honest with them and telling them things they don’t want to hear. Of course, I'm not saying encouragement and being supportive should be abandoned, but that this aspect should not be ignored. Telling friends things that might hurt their self-esteem, but in the end will make them a better person is the right course of action. Of course then it's up to the individual to react or not, but at least you tried to whatever degree. This is where friendship takes the next level. When two people can be humble and honest with each other, and in rare situations to risk the friendship for the betterment of the other person. This is one quality that I believe makes life-long friends.
Continued...
So for whatever reasons a friendship has begun. How that friendship grows is a different story. Some blossom into life-long relationships that stand the test of time and trials of life. Others quickly wither at the first signs of stress. I really believe the values of the individuals, personalities, and quality of interactions help define the strength of a friendship. One of my friends in New York recently lost a few of his close friends and a handful of others since he decided not to go along the path of partying that they were walking. These were his drinking and clubbing buddies for a few years. The majority of them starting getting into cocaine and he just didn’t want to go in that direction, but still wanted to hangout during the other times. They saw it as he was thinking he was too good for them or he was being judgmental since he wasn’t joining them in their cokefests. Conflicts occurred and most of them started to avoid him. So he learned who his true friends were he told me. Those that respected his decision and still wanted to maintain the friendship. There are a couple other situations I know of where party friends in the end don’t stay together because all they had in common was the dancing at night and drunken heart-to-heart talks. Or others that had friendships through sports teams, but outside of it they had nothing in common. As more responsibility occurs in life, priorities change and it can take more of an effort for people to grow a friendship.
I believe another factor in all of this is how our culture has affected our general thinking about love and friendship. Western culture emphasizes self and self-esteem. So a definition of love in the culture I grew up in is to help increase someone’s self-esteem. You show love and friendship by helping them feel better about themselves; being supportive; and giving encouragement. So a fair amount of times I'm the quack shrink for my friends, and they sometimes have problems in expressing concern or telling one of their friends things they don’t want to hear. They don’t want to get involved even if they know it will benefit their friend. Worst is that I might be friends with the same person, so I'm pressured to talk to that person or I myself feel obligated to do it (default megaphone or middle-man many times). Within Western culture, it can be to the point of overemphasizing the positives and pumping up a person's ego… to give props and say, “My friend is so money… he is the mac daddy of all-time… she is so fly!...” But not to tell them they should stop treating their girlfriend in such a way, slow down on the coke or your work will suffer, stop being lazy about your career, can't take advantage of your friends, stop pissing on the toilet seat, stop getting drunk and cheating on your boyfriend...
In Eastern culture, it is more about saving face and giving honor to a friend. Being in Korea over the past three years has really allowed me to experience how people just don’t want to tell others, including their friends, how they really think and feel. Very frustrating work environment too. Anyway, it’s either a passive-aggressive approach or the veiled-message method in communicating to others. Western or Eastern culture, the bottom line is that people want to make other people feel good about themselves, not step on their toes, or value keeping the status quo. This is a distortion of what I believe love is and should be, especially in the realm of friendship.
A pure example of love is between most parents and their child. Parents want what is best for their child and want to see improvement and growth and development. So they will scold the child, teach the child, talk to the child, comfort the child, etc. In a general manner, I believe the same should be for friends. Love between friends should be about doing what is best for someone, even if it means being honest with them and telling them things they don’t want to hear. Of course, I'm not saying encouragement and being supportive should be abandoned, but that this aspect should not be ignored. Telling friends things that might hurt their self-esteem, but in the end will make them a better person is the right course of action. Of course then it's up to the individual to react or not, but at least you tried to whatever degree. This is where friendship takes the next level. When two people can be humble and honest with each other, and in rare situations to risk the friendship for the betterment of the other person. This is one quality that I believe makes life-long friends.
Continued...
Labels:
friends,
friendships,
people,
relationships
Defining Friendship... Knowing About Someone and Knowing Someone Are Very Different
It was interesting this past Sunday as I sat in church and listened to the sermon. Not focusing on the actual sermon for this entry, but a point brought up by the pastor connected with some thoughts I’ve been having over the past couple weeks. The pastor was saying that you can know about God all your life through reading the Bible and other books, but you will not know God until you have an interaction or experiences that allow you to truly learn about Him. He related this to even a person who is obsessed with a celebrity. For example, a man is an Eminem fanatic. He knows Eminem’s life history, favorite foods, likes and dislikes, dating life, and even owns his first on-stage mike. He might even feel a close bonding with Eminem due to similar experiences or upbringing, or maybe even had one personal meeting a few years ago after winning a trip on MTV’s Fanatic to hangout with him for a day. But the reality is that he still doesn’t know Eminem. He hasn’t had any significant time to really know to some degree how Eminem thinks, reacts, laughs, cries, etc. So knowing someone isn’t an intellectual exercise or the amount of knowledge you have about someone, but the interactions and experiences that bond you and the other person together.
So some of the thoughts I’ve been having over the past couple weeks surround the topic of friendship. What is friendship? How is it defined for me and others around me? How strong are the bonds of friendship in my life and between people around me?
These questions were initiated by a couple situations. One was seeing a friendship between two people I know destroyed over a business deal. Another was seeing how guarded my parent’s have become with some of their friendships. Since growing up, my father would always warn me never to sign a personal loan even for my closest friend because one of his friends did the same and was in debt for millions after his friend fled the country with the money. There have also been situations where my parents helped out some friends during Korea’s economic crisis in 1997 (*parents live half the year in Seoul for business). In one situation, it was a close school friend of my father’s. He was unemployed and had some difficulty in supporting his family. After a year or so, he got a good position in the newly elected government, but never called my parents afterward. After some time, my parents just assumed he was busy, so they called him to see how he was doing, but he never called back. My parents didn’t want the money back or a favor, they just wanted to see how he was doing. My father was hurt by this situation since he assumed his friendship was based on something more than necessity or materialism.
Being a very cynical person, I have looked at many friendships in Korea with a critical eye. Majority of friendships, especially within the generation above, are based on school relationships. You went to grade school, middle school, high school, or college with someone and there is this immediate bond. If I thought about my high school, there were 500 students in my class and just because I went to school with them I wouldn’t consider them friends for life. For some reason, this institutional bond in Korea creates the idea of friends for life. Of course, the closer friends are the ones that spent a significant about of time with each other, but the whole foundation for friendship begins on shallow ground in my eyes. So when I hear of these stories from my father or friend’s parents about how this friend stole from this friend or backstabbed this friend, it really doesn’t surprise me. Not to oversimplify this discussion, the basis of friendship is not the cause of these situations. Money does funny stuff to people, even the most successful ones. And personal integrity plays a factor, as does the personality of the individual, and the culture and development stage of the country. I’m just slowly dragging my toe through the sand to start defining "friendship" in my world.
What is friendship? Some dictionary definitions are: one that is of the same nation, party, or group; one attached to another by affection or esteem; a favored companion. Simple definitions. People might also define it as... "someone you love", "someone you're able to share your inner thoughts with", "can cry with", "those that stop you from making mistakes", "loyal to you", etc.
I believe it can be a common history, common experience, family relationships, or sincere interest in the person that creates the initial bond. The usual cultivation grounds in life are school, gathering of parents, sports teams, work, and common friendships. There are varying degrees of friendship and factors involved that can make this discussion complex, but when I blog I don’t want to write a thesis or think too much so I’ll keep this casual as possible.
Anyway, you typically start out as an acquaintance with someone and numerous factors can push it to the level of friendship. For some, it’s time and familiarity (i.e. trust issues), convenience of the situation (i.e. work friends or limited pool to choose from due to geography or vocation), a strong interest in the person (i.e. fascinating person, just a great person, kind-hearted), or self interest (i.e. professional networking, affiliation with wealth, affiliation with celebrity). Vice versa, some people tend to be cautious with friendships because they had the intimate bond of friendship broken by distrust, betrayal, or some other factor in the past. Some like to keep their circle small because they feel they have limited time and/or resources, and want to focus on the friends that they have. Some are just introverted and want a small set of friends. Some are extroverted get energized by meeting various people. Others have strong selfish motivations that aren’t so well hidden, so people tend not to reciprocate the friendship. Or for other reasons, people do not want to open up to the person, so sometimes it is out of their control.
Continued...
So some of the thoughts I’ve been having over the past couple weeks surround the topic of friendship. What is friendship? How is it defined for me and others around me? How strong are the bonds of friendship in my life and between people around me?
These questions were initiated by a couple situations. One was seeing a friendship between two people I know destroyed over a business deal. Another was seeing how guarded my parent’s have become with some of their friendships. Since growing up, my father would always warn me never to sign a personal loan even for my closest friend because one of his friends did the same and was in debt for millions after his friend fled the country with the money. There have also been situations where my parents helped out some friends during Korea’s economic crisis in 1997 (*parents live half the year in Seoul for business). In one situation, it was a close school friend of my father’s. He was unemployed and had some difficulty in supporting his family. After a year or so, he got a good position in the newly elected government, but never called my parents afterward. After some time, my parents just assumed he was busy, so they called him to see how he was doing, but he never called back. My parents didn’t want the money back or a favor, they just wanted to see how he was doing. My father was hurt by this situation since he assumed his friendship was based on something more than necessity or materialism.
Being a very cynical person, I have looked at many friendships in Korea with a critical eye. Majority of friendships, especially within the generation above, are based on school relationships. You went to grade school, middle school, high school, or college with someone and there is this immediate bond. If I thought about my high school, there were 500 students in my class and just because I went to school with them I wouldn’t consider them friends for life. For some reason, this institutional bond in Korea creates the idea of friends for life. Of course, the closer friends are the ones that spent a significant about of time with each other, but the whole foundation for friendship begins on shallow ground in my eyes. So when I hear of these stories from my father or friend’s parents about how this friend stole from this friend or backstabbed this friend, it really doesn’t surprise me. Not to oversimplify this discussion, the basis of friendship is not the cause of these situations. Money does funny stuff to people, even the most successful ones. And personal integrity plays a factor, as does the personality of the individual, and the culture and development stage of the country. I’m just slowly dragging my toe through the sand to start defining "friendship" in my world.
What is friendship? Some dictionary definitions are: one that is of the same nation, party, or group; one attached to another by affection or esteem; a favored companion. Simple definitions. People might also define it as... "someone you love", "someone you're able to share your inner thoughts with", "can cry with", "those that stop you from making mistakes", "loyal to you", etc.
I believe it can be a common history, common experience, family relationships, or sincere interest in the person that creates the initial bond. The usual cultivation grounds in life are school, gathering of parents, sports teams, work, and common friendships. There are varying degrees of friendship and factors involved that can make this discussion complex, but when I blog I don’t want to write a thesis or think too much so I’ll keep this casual as possible.
Anyway, you typically start out as an acquaintance with someone and numerous factors can push it to the level of friendship. For some, it’s time and familiarity (i.e. trust issues), convenience of the situation (i.e. work friends or limited pool to choose from due to geography or vocation), a strong interest in the person (i.e. fascinating person, just a great person, kind-hearted), or self interest (i.e. professional networking, affiliation with wealth, affiliation with celebrity). Vice versa, some people tend to be cautious with friendships because they had the intimate bond of friendship broken by distrust, betrayal, or some other factor in the past. Some like to keep their circle small because they feel they have limited time and/or resources, and want to focus on the friends that they have. Some are just introverted and want a small set of friends. Some are extroverted get energized by meeting various people. Others have strong selfish motivations that aren’t so well hidden, so people tend not to reciprocate the friendship. Or for other reasons, people do not want to open up to the person, so sometimes it is out of their control.
Continued...
Labels:
friends,
friendships,
people,
relationships
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