Friendship: An Out There! Collaboration

07 January 2001

Friendship - the Challenge is Out There!

TOPIC FOR DECEMBER 2000 OUT THERE! COLLABORATION:
This month, the topic is friendship. What kind of people do you surround yourself with as your friends? Do you find yourself more comfortable with people your own age, or does that matter? Do you like to surround yourself with lots of people, or do you like to have a smaller, more tight-knit group around? How easy or difficult is it for you to meet new people/make new friends? Is it easier or harder to make friends using the Internet, and what kind of positive effect has meeting friends online had on your life? What are a couple of the greatest kindnesses a friend has shown to you? Share some of your opinions on the concept of friendship.

Friends, to paraphrase several authors, are forever. Or at least more long-lasting than lovers and boyfriends. ;-)

Friendship means a great deal to me. The people with whom I surround myself are ones in whom I see qualities that I would like to emulate. Compassion, empathy, understanding, patience, wildness, intelligence, etc., etc., etc. All of those things that we seek to be better at, I tend to select in my friends. These things challenge me, and that is what I love about having friends.

This doesn't mean that my friends are perfect people - far from it! ;-) But they are good people, ones with whom I enjoy associating. Ones with whom I am proud to associate.

I tend to keep one or two close friends with whom I share confidences and the like, and then also have lots of others whom I know and call friend. They might more properly be deemed "acquaintances" to others, but I tend to assume the closer bond of friendship much sooner than most. I like people, and I guess I translate that into friendship more easily than others. Not always to my benefit - I don't automatically trust these people necessarily, but I do treat them as friends should be treated.

Friends are easy to make, to my mind, and I make them all over. The 'net has been a major help in this, allowing conversations with multiple people at the same time. After getting away from The Ex in 1999, I totally regrew a social circle using the online medium, especially gay.com. I regularly chat for hours on end on there, and know (and am known by) a great number of people because of it. This was certainly easier than going out to bars, or coffee houses, or whatever to talk to people. The awkwardness of those first meetings is so much more easily overcome when you're online and, to some extent, can be as gregarious (or reticent) as you want to be without fear of social disaster. After all, if you royally screw up, you can always pic another nickname should the need arise. :-)

Being able to meet friends in this way has connected me to so many people with whom I would never have been converse before I got online. To be able to know these people of all sorts of backgrounds, and to discuss things, and learn things, has been one of the wonders of the 'net. I thank my lucky stars to have been able to take advantage of this medium to make friends and reach out to people; I can't imagine not having this broad a range of people I call friends. Life would be so boring without them around to challenge me, to make me grow.

And that challenge has to be one of the best things about having friends. They're not the same as you, they have different opinions, and they don't always agree with you on things. But when they do disagree, they do so in a way that can help you to better understand their side of things, and help you to become a better person. Why else have friends, if not to be challenged?

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