Honest Friendship (Summer 2001)

I placed a thought a friend sent to me on my Alien Friends thought page.
He had a thought asking if true friendship existed. It was about the faces we all have. How we all have different masks. How many faces do I have? I play a different person in school, at home, and from one group of friends to another. We all do. The two first things I learned in my Social Psychology class (Spring 2001) is that people want to be "right" and people want to be "accepted." Those two things are so very true! Who doesn't want to be right and accepted? But that subject of being accepted puts us in situations where we do things we wouldn't normally do. That sucks, but we all want that love and support. We all want to be accepted into the group.

We all want to be right too. After learning this, I now understand why Religion Wars exist. Many people don't want to admit they are wrong or that they've screwed up in life. We all want to think we are all so perfect. To most people it's hard to say, "I was wrong." To say, "I fucked up."

When it comes to true friends, I do believe I know what it is. I know true friendship. My best friends know I have many faces. To me, the biggest point about talking shit about friends is to be able to talk that shit to their face. I am honest with my closest friends. To me, that's what makes us true friends. I tell them things that I don't like about them, I tell them my opinion when it comes to their thoughts I disagree with, or what I don't like about certain actions they do. Doing this, they do the same with me. This group of my closest friends can never agree with everything forever. No one is exactly the same with any person in this world. We are all individuals.

Accepting this difference and disagreement, to me, is the only healthy way to go. That's for me at least. If I can take a criticism from a friend, and they can take one from me while keeping the loving bond, that to me is true friendship.