Friendship
Friendship is one of our basic human experiences, equal in importance to love or
justice.
A real friendship means trust, honesty, support, loyalty, empathy, affection,
sympathy, and it enhances your life.
You have someone to have fun with and share a laugh with. You exchange
thoughts and lift each other’s spirits when you feel grumpy and moody.
A real friend accepts you for who you are, forgives your mistakes, ignores your
imperfections. provides emotional, physical and financial support in times of
need and crisis.
Most friendships are forged at school, at work, in hobby clubs, or on social
occasions. Forming friendship may prove difficult for shy, introvert people and
loners, who are afraid of socialising.
Friendship is usually based on similarities, but some people are attracted by their
opposites. Different personalities, complementing each other, can also establish
a lasting friendship.
There a few ways to prove you are a good friend: For example, be a good
listener, show empathy and interest in their lives and respect their points of view
and never betray them. Make an effect to reach out, and get together as often as
you can because shared experiences are primary building blocks of friendship.
Some friendships break up suddenly due to conflict. Your friend betrays you,
gossips about you and gives your secrets away. Or, your friend snatches away
your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife.
Many relationships taper off due to lack of time or energy. Or, the friends grow
in different ways, and their relationship slowly loses importance.
Most friends drift apart because of changes in their circumstances, lifestyles,
goals. When you move to another city, lose your job, get married, or have a
baby, it may become difficult to stay in touch.
Friendship is not always a positive relationship.
Fair-weather friends cultivate your friendship only as long as you are successful.
If there is no equality between you, your friend may want to control and change
you. Or, your friend, playing on your emotions, monopolises your time and
energy.
These days a growing number of people become friends online. Experts claim
that Internet friendships cannot be truly meaningful for lack of real-life contact.
Also, the Net allows several forms of deception. Some people upload
manipulated photos and lie about their age, gender, job.
TED-talk
Lifelong friendship is rare. But there are exceptions just like Jane Fonda’s and
Lilly Tomlin’s friendship.
These two actresses go back a long way, they worked together when they were
younger, and since then, they go on like a house on fire. They talked about their
friendship in a TED-talk. Besides that they were totally on the same wavelength,
they mentioned some interesting facts, for example the importance of a female
friendship. Women’s relationships are full disclosure, because they risk
vulnerability. Jane and Lilly said that they see deeply into the other’s soul,
which makes the friendship so to say spiritual.
It’s also mentioned in the interview, that the Harvard Medical School has
shown that women who have close friendships are less likely to get physical
impairments as they age.
Rent-a-friend agencies growing in Japan
When talking about friendship, it’s important to see that some people don’t have a lot
of friends. And if there’s an occasion where they don’t want to go alone, there’s an
interesting solution. In Japan, there are rent-a-friend agencies. You can invite
professional fakers to specific occasions, and they will pretend to be anyone you want
them to be.
I think this idea can be beneficial for a lot of people for example loners, or people
who don’t like to socialize. I also believe that the rent-a-friend idea isn’t so ethical. It
doesn’t seem nice to me that people create a business from friendship.
The lives of Japanese are restricted. And because of that they think very differently
from Europeans, so this idea wouldn’t work in Hungary. Also, because the lack of
trust between people here, and the frauds would probably step into the way of this
idea.
I personally wouldn’t rent a friend. Being with a stranger only to seem good is worse
than going somewhere on my own. I also like to be alone, so from that perspective I’m
lucky. But I also wouldn’t work as a rental friend, because even though I like acting, I
know that I’m not really a social person. It wouldn’t be easy for me to be so
comfortable with strangers, that I may not even like. If I were a social butterfly and flat
broke, I would probably consider this job.
