One of Uncle Bubba’s best friends, one that he’s known from when they was just pups, recently asked Bubbie what he thought it meant to be a friend. Doesn’t it seem that when we gain more and more life experiences, the simplest things can get complicated in our thinking? When this happens, Uncle Bubba told me, he usually thinks about what he learned in kindergarten. It’s become a cliche that everything we need to know about life we learned in kindergarten, but there are reasons things are cliche.
Bubbie’s reply to his friend was this: “You can like someone and be friendly to them and even enjoy their company, yet that doesn’t mean that you are friends. Friends do several things constantly: they are compatible, act amiably, loyally, and reciprocate. Most friendships take time to develop and the more history 2 people create and as trust evolves, the friendship grows (or doesn’t if the before mentioned don’t come into play).”
If we take a moment to look at his assessment, let’s think about compatibility. Initially we gravitate to people because we feel or find things that we have in common. We bring different perspectives to commonalities, but we have more than passing interests in the things we have a passion for or enjoy doing. When we meet others with common interests we feel a compatibility with them. We existing together in harmony.
Compatibility can be a double edged sword because of another cliche: misery loves company. How often do we hang out with people that love to commiserate about our self-imposed problems? But does that make a true friendship? In Bubbie’s view, amiability is necessary for a long and lasting friendship. Commiserating is fine as a means of short term therapy, but being amiable, being friendly and pleasant is an act of giving one’s best. When we care for someone, don’t we want them to feel our friendship as pleasant? Uncle Bubba does.
So we have common interests, likes and dislikes. We have pleasant interactions and feelings; and in Bubbie’s view, we need actions because a friendship is an activity. Friends share experiences and build history and in doing so they reciprocate, they give and take mutually. They are both amiable, and true friends also take an interest in things of which they aren’t compatible. Friends gladly share, they gladly give.
Uncle Bubba said that he knows that friendship has many more facets, but he wanted to pare it down to simple kindergarten-like terms. How long a friendship lasts depends upon the length of time compatibility, amiability, and reciprocation exists. We choose how long we want to remain loyal to the friendship. Amiability is fickle because of emotions; we all have good days and bad. Compatibility can fade as we develop as people, and without compatibility a friendship will be snuffed out as a candle. But be not discouraged because we can choose to find new compatible things in old friends. True friends look for opportunities to renew their friendship.
In Bubbie’s final view, so many folks are in our lives for a reason and a season. Perhaps we need something from them, maybe they need something from us. Some friendships last a lifetime and others fade away, so choose your friends wisely.
