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September 20, 2004
Friends
What greater love can one have for another than to wrap him in a massive bear hug, ruffle his hair (because you know that it really irritates him) and tell him that you love him. Because he's your friend, because he annoys the hell out of you, because he's seen you up and he's seen you down, been there for the trauma, the terror and the elation. Because you know that you will know each other forever, even if you don't speak for a year or live in separate continents, you know that your friends are the people who will count.
Embracing friendship is easier for some than for others. The constituents of friendship are too many and varied to be defined easily, but everyone instinctively understands them. Whereas some people make friends immediately with those they have just met, others take more time to pronounce their judgement on acquaintances or those whom they have recently met. Is the depth or breadth of the eventual friendships different? Does it matter? Everyone understands that some of the friendships we form are natural and almost unconscious choices. The phrase "I can't imagine us not being friends" is so common as to be ubiquitous.
Of course, the embracing of friends, of taking them to your heart and into rooms of your psyche where others are forbidden to go, can be dangerous. It requires a faith and trust in them which can be hard to give. However open or private a person may be, there is a step to be taken which involves the disclosure of things which you may not want to disclose. While no-one is an open book, there are still pieces of life which everyone keeps to themself, either embarrassed or ashamed by their deeds, choices and thoughts.
Those grubby, imperfect jewels are kept tight in a locked box within us, where we are unwilling to put them on display. Which is precisely why we are afraid and disappointed by the betrayal of friends; "I allowed you in, only you, to hold you close, and yet you remained unmoved by this rare privilege, this denuding, and turned to expose me." Just as you can be betrayed by a kiss, you can be betrayed by a hug.
(Reprinted with permission by the author, LondonMark)
Cindy
Comments
Hmmm, where do you turn when someone close betrays you? Inwards. And stay there. People are basically untrustworthy. To my warped mind, anyhow :-)
Brain matter deposited by: pogo on September 21, 2004 8:50 AM
It's distressing to discover that people we viewed as close friends really aren't that at all; either we envisioned them as such, hoping they'd live up to our fantasy of meeting our friendship expectations or that we trusted them and ultimately found ourselves feeling very foolish because of it. I can see how one could easily retreat within themselves and become jaded, questioning every other friendship that exists and hoping that they're not all the same.
Brain matter deposited by: Cindy on September 22, 2004 12:07 PM