Friday, December 19, 2008

Friendship - cultural and personal perspective

By John King

As a great quote was saying, "friendship is the bridge between Earth and Heaven"; actually, no matter how much you analyze this quote or how much you try to describe friendship in words, they could never be enough to define it. It's all about giving instead of expecting or receiving; it's about feeling when a friend is down and visiting him for no particular reason.. It's about trust and confidence, it's about sharing, it's about another kind of love.

An interesting approach literature has on the subject claims that a person should be friends with itself first, in order to be friends with others. He who hasn't found a friend in himself, could never have one in the outside world. Another quote, saying "the greatest sweetener of human life is friendship" is also very real, and together they prove the value given to friendship by literature - may it be classical or modern.

Psychologists propose many theories for explaining friendship, such as: social exchange theory, rational dialectics, equity theory, attachment styles and so on. They concluded that confidence is the most important ingredient in a friendship - this satisfies the human need to share deep secrets without being betrayed; to build this kind of trust, time is necessary, but once the rules broken - wounds don't heal very easy, or they don't heal at all. In the end, as we can imagine, friendship can't really be put into theory exactly, but certain characteristics do apply.

The word "friendship" itself is even used in some political speeches, as it is a very powerful emotion modifier. People are sensitive about this word, and not at their conscious level - that's why it's so powerful. It was even used to define relationships between states, although this unnaturalized the meaning of it in a way.

Since love transforms itself into a beautiful friendship in the end, we could conclude that it's probably the best human emotion there is - but that would be trying to put it into theory again. The ones who felt it(and I'm sure anyone felt it at least once) know its sweet taste as they also know the bitter sweet of the betrayal. They're both part of our lives and they're here to stay. - 16003

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