.By Emmanuel Chukwu0 9139192064
Friendship is something that every human being cherishes. This is so because man is a social being predisposed by nature to interact with his fellow human.
Living together as a community, coming together for work, worship and trade have made human interaction inescapable. Coming together to study as students and other fora for human interaction have deepened chances of friendship.
In these various forms of interactions human beings are bound to develop inclinations to hobnob based on each person’s perceptions of others. Basically, common interests, common thinking and or views strongly bring people together.
All these grounds of interactions are not qualified for people to see themselves as friends in the fundamental sense of friendship. Having common goals or mutual interests do not warrant us to see others as our friends, but as fellow humans brought together by circumstances. That you are school mates, political associates, office colleagues and business partners is not enough reason to qualify you as friends.
Here in Nigeria and some other parts of the world, people mistake relationships in the above grounds for friendship. The fundamental qualification for someone to be called your friend is that mutual feeling of goodness you have. The fact that someone helps you and vice versa does not make you friends.
Most often, because of closeness to people we work for, worship with, discuss with and school with we are tempted to regard such people as our friends, but it is not true all the time. It would have been true if there was mutual likeness. You are right to call someone you like your friend, but there is no certainty of a similar feeling in the other person. Sometimes, friendship is a one sided feeling of someone who cherishes the other person without complements.
We delude ourselves in this part of the world by assuming that everybody we know is our friend. When you know someone and cherish the person it does not translate to friendship Experience has shown that some of the people we call our friends have no regard for us. A particular interest may bring you close to someone and naturally you like that person and based on your personal feeling you begin to regard the person as your friend not knowing that he or she has no reciprocal tilt towards you.
On account of the foregoing secnario a lot of people have continued to complain about being disappointed by their so called friends, without knowing that there needs to be a reciprocal tilt before you begin to classify someone as your friend. Some of the people we associate with see us as what should be called nonentities to be called their friends. Sometimes this attitude comes as a result of malfunctioning of the individual brain. Naturally, there is nothing wrong for you to see your fellow human being as a friend, but one has to be sure of the position of the other person before calling him or her your friend.
Spiritually speaking, doing good to people is an obligation human beings owe one another, irrespective of whether we are friends or not. Therefore, it is wrong to assume that anyone that has helped you is your friend or that anyone that you have helped is your friend. You do not help people because they are your friends, but because they are human beings.
Those you have helped can betray you and when it happens, you do not have to complain that your friend has betrayed you, because from the beginning that person did not like you. In fact a friend cannot betray a friend. In the Bible, Delilah betrayed Sampson her husband because she never liked him from the beginning. If she truly saw him as her better half, she should not have betrayed him.
We have to understand that some of the people we call friends mock us in our absence? Some of them rejoice when we are in trouble. So where lies friendship? However, in life it has permanently been possible for people to believe that everyone they like also like them as to treat them as friends. Been treated otherwise by others is not a moral fault, but a product of faulty judgement. The trusting fellow is not guilty for believing that the other person is truly a friend.
The Longman dictionary of Contemporary English for advanced learners defines a friend as someone you know and like very much and enjoy spending time with. Someone whose body itches whenever you are close to him or her is not your friend. Your friend feels happy seeing you around. Your friend wants to hear you speak. Your friend is under serious pain and suffering when you are in trouble.
For instance, there are people who will not pick your phone calls or even return them, even days after. It is wrong in your imagination to call them friends, it is even wrong to see them as kings because kings are willing to know what is wrong with their subjects. Assuming you are in an emergency situation and you called someone for immediate response and you got a dead end what would you say? Such a person cannot be called a friend or king, better avoid them.
In the Bible, David and Jonathan were good example of friendship. Jonathan was King Saul’s son, but his father saw the little David as his rival and plotted to kill him. Jonathan did not keep quiet as his father plotted to kill David his friend. He leaked his father’s evil plan to David! That is what friendship is and nothing short of it.
There are little minded human beings who have not developed beyond the ordinary, who appropriate friendship from the mundane and periphery that as a result of their spiritual and intellectual limitations they feel superior to see those who are even more spiritually and intellectually superior to them as nobody to be called their friends. It should always be that they are not ultra grounded to know the meaning of friendship, its imperatives and the true meaning of interdependent humanity.
It will be too wrong to describe somebody who sees you as a competitor as a friend. Friendship does not compete rather it complements. If someone regards himself as a king or queen as the case may be as not to see you as qualified to be called a friend, it is up to you to choose whether to answer a servant or friend to him or her. Before you call someone your friend, find out what he or she regards you as. It is important to know this..
- True friendship is good and sweet.
