Welcome to the Fork in the Road Blog: Reflections on Life, musings based on my perception of life spanning decades of active life. This episode – Friendship –muses over personal, human, relationships.
Dictionaries define human Friendship as a relationship of mutual affection between people. It is a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an acquaintance or an association. It implies reciprocity. Friendship cannot be one sided.
An acquaintance is a person one knows slightly, but who is not a close friend; someone you know and spend time with occasionally. A friend, on the other hand, is a person with whom you have a strong bond of mutual affection. It is the bonding and affection that define friendship not physical closeness or time spent talking with each other. But the bonding and affection develop through close interaction and mutual enrichment. Friends know more about each other than acquaintances do.
In Fork in the road, I advise on choosing uplifting friends to help create an enjoyable and fulfilling life. I further point out the importance of learning to differentiate between friends and acquaintances. We very often confuse acquaintances as friends and end up disappointed that people, we thought were friends, have let us down when we needed them. Friendship can be ended but acquaintanceship cannot be “stopped”.
We can talk of “the view round the bend” referring to what may happen, or what you may see, when a particular event has happened. In connection with friendship, the “view round the bend” can be a mirage, an illusion, an unrealistic hope, or a wish that cannot be achieved especially when casual acquaintance is confused with (true) friendship.
Since obligation is a course of action that someone is required to take, whether legal or moral, there is no obligation to act among friends. Obligations are constraints; they limit freedom. An obligation is an act or course of action to which a person is morally or legally bound, a duty or commitment. Among friends there is no moral or legal duty to “act” towards each other. One acts simply because one feels the joy of acting accordingly. True friendship is built on trust. Mutual human trust is a firm belief in the reliability, truth, and ability looking out for each other. Very often we do not obtain tangible benefit from friendships, but their mere presence creates a buttress to our lives and wellbeing. The knowledge of people who would respond to your call for help without hesitation or expectation of rewards is sufficient to give one a peace on mind.
Friendships can be formed in many ways but rarely as “love at first sight”. Friendships evolve through acquaintanceship developing as mutual trust is established.
I like using the analogy of the view round the bend in my life’s journey to describe specific goals. The view round the bend, in connection with friendship, can be a mirage, an illusion, an unrealistic hope or wish that cannot be achieved especially when casual acquaintance is confused with (true) friendship.
The saying “climbing up the ladder” in life is very expressive. Success in life is normally judged by how much one has “moved up” socially, academically, financially, politically etc. Moving up implies climbing up real or virtual steps or rungs of a ladder. When climbing up a ladder, one normally pulls oneself up by holding on rungs above and stepping up on the rungs below. One could be assisted by friends, colleagues, and acquaintances by lending a hand to pull up or by helping with a push up. There are no hooks in the sky one can use to hoist oneself up.
Our lives are filled with many people who have made a difference to our lives as we climbed up life’s ladders. Friends’ good helping hands could have been instrumental in our lives at school and professionally. Helping hands are useful when the person being helped is worth helping, willing and cooperative.
Very often we do not obtain tangible benefit from friendships, but their mere presence creates a buttress to our lives and wellbeing. The knowledge of people who would respond to your call for help without hesitation or expectation of rewards is sufficient to give one a peace on mind.
Peer influence can be confused for friendship until we discover that it is leading us in the wrong direction, especially during the formative and impressionable years. Who we surround ourselves with makes an enormous impact on our life. In many ways, they, positively or negatively, help shape our lives. The beauty of friendship is that it can be ended if it turns toxic. In other words, if we notice that it is leading us in the wrong direction.
Friendship is like a life’s ventilator through which happiness and peace of mind radiate to us. An individual without friends is a miserable person because such a person lives a life devoid of social fallback. A social life view without friends is like being in a room with no light ventilation and turning into a wall when the intention was to walk through a door.
Remember: Friendship can be ended but acquaintanceship cannot be “stopped”.
Thank you for being part of the Fork in the Road Blogs: Reflections on Life. Be sure to look out for the next episode when I will be writing about Trust. And if you gathered something useful, please feel free to share the blog. My book, Fork in the Road: Creating a future of value starting from where you are is available for purchase at Aristoc bookshops in Kampala and online at Amazon