What is friendship? Who really knows anymore? Do friends stab you in the back? They\u2019re not supposed to. Do friends ghost you without explaining why? That\u2019s not what I thought friendship was, but hey, maybe I missed the memo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my mind, friends are supposed to be there through the good times and the bad ones. They understand you, or at least try to. They know your weaknesses, your faults and the things that make you difficult sometimes, because none of us are exactly a walk in the park. Real friends don\u2019t have to agree with everything you do, but they should be able to talk to you about it. They shouldn\u2019t bad-mouth you behind your back or quietly disappear when things get uncomfortable. Friendship should mean standing beside someone, even when standing beside them isn\u2019t always easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, sometimes it feels like friends today are a dime a dozen because that may be about what some friendships are worth. I used to hold tightly to the people I considered friends. Maybe too tightly. I believed that even though I have plenty of flaws, the people who truly knew me would still be there. Maybe I expected too much. Maybe year after year my flaws became too much for some people to accept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But should that leave me believing there is simply something wrong with me? I don\u2019t think so. Maybe my former friends could explain it to me\u2014ohhh, wait. That\u2019s part of the problem. Instead of saying, \u201cHere\u2019s what bothers me,\u201d or giving someone a chance to understand what changed, people sometimes just push you away. Then you are left standing there trying to solve a puzzle without knowing half the pieces are missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I sometimes tell myself I have learned not to care about people anymore. Then I have to add the obvious question: Have I really? Probably not. If I truly didn\u2019t care, I wouldn\u2019t be writing this. What bothers me isn\u2019t simply losing a friendship or discovering someone doesn\u2019t like me. People come and go. What bothers me is the lack of honesty that so often comes with it. People lie, disappear, talk behind each other\u2019s backs and leave the other person wondering what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whatever happened to simply knowing where you stood with somebody? I could respect an honest \u201cI don\u2019t like you\u201d far more than a smile to my face followed by something completely different when I walk away. At least honesty gives you something real to work with. You may not like the answer, but you understand it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That brings me to something I struggle with even more: respect. I was raised to respect people, and I still want to believe everyone deserves a certain level of basic human respect. But sometimes that gets difficult when the respect only seems to travel in one direction. People feel perfectly comfortable judging someone else while believing they themselves should somehow be protected from the same judgment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I see smaller examples of this all the time. One day at work, a conversation turned to snow in Japan. A coworker insisted that it doesn\u2019t snow there because he had never seen it. I explained that Japan absolutely gets snow\u2014enormous amounts in some places\u2014and that it would take about thirty seconds to verify it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You would think that would have ended the discussion. Nope. Apparently facts can be inconvenient when somebody has already decided they are right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead of checking, I became the guy who supposedly didn\u2019t know what he was talking about. That doesn\u2019t bother me because I need everyone to think I\u2019m right. What interests me is why admitting we are wrong has become so difficult. Somewhere along the way, being corrected started feeling like an attack instead of an opportunity to learn something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That may be part of the larger problem. We have become very comfortable judging people while becoming increasingly uncomfortable with being questioned ourselves. We want understanding for our own mistakes, personalities and beliefs, but we don\u2019t always extend that same understanding to the person standing beside us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This isn\u2019t meant to be a story about me whining because somebody hurt my feelings. I\u2019m trying to understand something much bigger. How did we reach a point where people can be surrounded by others and still feel completely alone? How did we become so quick to dismiss people who are different, difficult or simply imperfect?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe friendship is only one piece of that puzzle. Maybe what I\u2019m really looking for is something much simpler: honesty, compassion and a little understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We don\u2019t have to agree with everybody. We don\u2019t even have to like everybody. But we can speak honestly. We can listen before judging. We can tell someone when something is wrong instead of leaving them to figure it out alone. And we can remember that every person we meet is carrying flaws, fears, experiences and struggles that we probably know nothing about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everyone is different. Everyone is imperfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And everyone deserves to be treated like a human being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By J Jones<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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