Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: friendship

  • Be A Friend To Yourself – A Real One

    Be A Friend To Yourself – A Real One

    Be a friend to yourself. A real one. Photo showing real friends having honest discussion.
    Real friends appreciate honest support that comes from the willingness to offer even painful truths. (Adobe Stock image: licensed by author)

    # 59 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Do not tolerate behavior in yourself that you would not support and respect in a friend.

    Do your friends ever seek your advice with their problems? If so, do you tell them what you know they want to hear? Or do you tell them what you believe they need to hear? 

    There is a Proverb that speaks to this issue:

    ”Faithful are the wounds of a friend [who corrects out of love and concern], But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful [because they serve his hidden agenda].”

    ~Proverbs 27:6 (Amplified Bible)

    Which begs the question, what is a friend?

    Real friendship implies the permission to say (and listen to) the hard things…to tell (and hear) the truth. 

    This excludes 99.9% of your social media followers.

    Admittedly, there are even RL relationships that don’t meet this standard. We may call those people ”friends”, but they’re not really friends. Not in any meaningful way. You can tell if someone is a friend by what you tolerate, and what you respect. You may hang out with someone you don’t respect, but you sure as hell won’t solicit their advice on anything important. And you can also gauge the quality of the relationship by their openness to your input and advice.

    Friends offer each other correction and constructive criticism. Even if it stings. No, especially when it stings. You tell your friend the hard things because you love them. You ”wound” them with your words because you are concerned about the course they are on. Your silence could lead to worse wounds than your words could ever cause. To remain silent, or to offer encouragement, would not only be un-friendly, it would border on the actions of an enemy.

    Think of the last time you had the opportunity to faithfully wound a friend. Did you tell your friend the truth? Even if it was a hard truth? If you did, you are a true friend, and one of life’s most valuable treasures. After all, we can get enemies to tell us what we want to hear. But, when a friend stings you with their words, you’ve just received helpful insight that a thousand hours with a therapist won’t equal. Hopefully this is what you did, and it was received in the spirit in which you offered it.

    If you didn’t speak up, or felt you couldn’t; or you did, and it was brushed off, rebutted, and refuted, it’s time to re-evaluate the relationship. Is it really a friendship, or is it something less. More than an acquaintance, perhaps, but less than a friend…far less.

    Take the medicine you would offer

    Using this framework, apply the same approach to any problems for which you need advice, and to any areas where you suspect you have flaws you won’t ignore in people you care about.

    If a friend brought you these issues, what would you say? To one in the same situation, would you offer truth? Or, would you be mere acquaintance? Would your silence or your appeasing words amount to the kisses of an enemy? 

    Can you follow the same advice, and take the same medicine, however hard, you would offer your friend if the roles were reversed? 

    Granted, there are issues we can’t see clearly for ourselves. So I’m not suggesting that self-diagnosis, or self-care is always enough. It’s not. Some issues require another ”set of eyes”. Our so-called blind spots, for instance, are impossible to see alone. But sometimes, we indulge and excuse behaviors we would never support or respect if a friend did the same. 

    ”Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” comes to mind. But that’s not all those who care about each other won’t let each other do.

    Be a friend to yourself, and fill in the blank with anything and everything in your life you know you would never let a friend do without speaking up and trying to stop it. Now, as hard as it may be, take your own advice. Remember, faithful are the wounds of a friend.

  • Friendship: How Big A Boat Are We Talking About?

    On this behemoth there are stations, and teams, and suchlike. Sure there are buddies, but not everyone is close with everyone else.

    My oldest son believes that I need more friends. Part of his concern is that he came across an article suggesting that people who have close friendships live longer. The article references some studies that produced statistics for the average number of friends and acquaintances a person has. I am well below average. This informs my son’s concern. It is sweet to me that he is concerned and that he wants me to live as long as possible. He certainly means well.

    However it is common to mistake correlation for causality. It is equally incorrect to mistake quantity for quality. The studies on friendship that suggest the average person has 12 friends and 50-75 others at the acquaintance level may in fact be statistically true. But there is no qualitative analysis provided for what are called ”friendships”. And therein lies the rub, as they say.

    We must first define friend. And in the defining we have to think about the threshold for friendship. There has to be some base level of interaction that distinguishes friends from acquaintances, business partners, store clerks, waitresses, and lovers. Right?

    And the hundreds of people that are my friends on say, Facebook, aren’t. I clicked a blue button. Their profile ended up in a list associated with my facebook account. That’s it. Really. That’s it. That doesn’t establish a friend or friendship.

    I heard someone a long time ago talk about the word friendship with an emphasis on the ship part. He drew out the comparison of an aircraft carrier to a canoe. The aircraft carrier he said, is more like a floating city. There may be hundreds of personnel on board, maybe more. I didn’t feel it important to look up a precise count. I trust you to trust me that an aircraft carrier, while definitely a ship, is too big to call everyone aboard it, your friend.

    Or take a cruise ship; you’ll climb on one of those without knowing hardly anyone. You don’t need to know them. You’re just using it as a means of entertainment and transportation. It’s a mini-Las Vegas experience. The people are scenery, or servants. Cruise ships are the Facebook of sea-going vessels.

    This is the essence of quality over quantity

    A canoe, on the other hand is a very intimate thing indeed. It is highly responsive, for better or worse to the slightest movement or shift in balance of anyone aboard. Ideally, two people in a canoe will work together. They will coordinate action. If the bow paddler is pulling on the right, starboard side of the craft, the stern paddler will ordinarily paddle on the left, or port side. This is unless they want to go in a circle. Paddling on the same side is the surest way to accomplish that. 

    Likewise, there is a technique for quickly turning a canoe in which the bow paddler may back-paddle (paddle in reverse) on one side of the boat, while the stern paddler paddles in a normal forward direction on the other side. This will spin a canoe if coordinated properly. And in some circumstances this can be useful. 

    Also, in a canoe, the weaker partner sets the pace. There is little benefit for one paddler to be pulling at 10 strokes a minute ( a leisurely pace), while the other is pulling at 20. The boat moves best if both people act as one. 

    This same rule applies to skulling teams. The coxswain calls the beat and the rowers all synchronize their movements.

    You wouldn’t climb into a canoe with just anyone. And if you did, it likely wouldn’t be a pleasant experience, or the kind you’d ever want to repeat. You get in a canoe with someone you know, someone you trust. A friend, in other words.

    To me, these are delightful metaphors of genuine, qualitative friend”ship”. Yeah, it’s a hella small ship, but the level of interaction is uniquely, satisfyingly meaningful. That kind of friendship is rare, but worth it. It is quality over quantity. On the  battleship, or aircraft carrier of normal life, we are more like ”ships in the night” than canoe-mates. I prefer a canoe, friend.