My Definition of Friendship
Roman Statesman Cicero said: "Friendship increases happiness and diminishes misery by doubling our joy and dividing our grief". Friendship is a concept that cannot be defined completely because people understand it according to their own personal experiences. For some, a friend is simply someone they can enjoy quality time with, for others a friend is a person they care for and have a friendly and pleasant relationship. For others, a friend is someone they stick to for the better or worse. Personally, I belong to the second category. I believe that friendship is a strong bond between people trust and accept each other unconditionally.
A friend is someone that makes you feel emotionally safe, someone you wouldn't have to weigh your thoughts and words with because you know that they sometimes know you better than you know your own yourself. A person that will be there to listen to your late night whining and accept your darkest secrets but at the same time can understand that you don't necessarily want to share everything about yourself and respects that. The pressure of becoming the person everyone expects you to be can be draining. For example, at school, once you are labeled as the popular kid, you need to live up to whatever expectation that label implies, even if it's not necessarily who you are or what you want to do. But a friend is someone who doesn't care about those labels because they know how it feels, they understand you and don't blame you for it.
The best example I can think of is my best friend Saloua. I met her when I was thirteen years old. Our friendship surprised a lot of people because there was all the difference in the world between our two personalities. She was a care-free beautiful blond girl who liked shopping and loved spending time with her family while I was the sarcastic brunette obsessed with her grades and had complicated family problems. Nevertheless, Saloua very quickly became my life buoy in this very scary world called High School. In High school Every day I would wake up and put a mask on my face, I felt forced to put filters on my life and pretend that I was a perfectly perfect girl who had perfectly happy life and had a perfectly perfect future ahead of her and it was exhausting me. But when I was with her, I never had to wear that awful fake mask because she never made me feel that kind of pressure. Saloua never expected me to be great or smiley or cheerful or perfect, she cared for me even if I was the queen of nagging, even if my dry sense of humor was offensive most of the time even if I was not perfect. She accepted it all of it without doubting for a second that I could accomplish all of my ambitions. The day I told her that one of my dreams was to quit school, leave everything behind and become a photographer for National Geographic she simply answered: "That is crazy and completely unrealistic but also totally awesome. If that's really want to do, just do it."
Everyone basically melted when Cristina and Meredith in the Grey's anatomy series created the "my person" concept to describe their one of a kind relationship. A relationship that can survive the test of time and remain unconditional no matter how much they hurt each other and no matter how different they are from each other. Cristina was the only person able to accept and understand Meredith's dark and twisted side without ever judging her. In the same way, Meredith never doubted Cristina's warm and generous heart no matter how much people perceived her as a cold heartless robot. Saloua was and still is my person.
Friendship can mean different things to different people. For some people it is the ability to trust. For others just normal companionship. After all, we all have different needs and our expectations from our friends differ as well. But as far as I am concerned, Friendship goes beyond just sharing time together, it doesn't matter how long you haven't seen each other your bond is strong enough to remain intact and unconditional.
No comments:
Post a Comment