Am I a true friend if I…
Let you act a fool time and time again
Let you constantly be rude and obnoxious
Let you erode others with your sarcastic, almost childish snide remarks
Let you drive on the wrong lane without pulling you over for fear of stepping on your toes
Let you continue to be infested by your unhealthy habits without a word of caution
Let you sweep your shit under the mat until your being starts to reek
Let you walk out the house all ill-looking and not put together
I’ve truly used the word let loosely here but by me being silent in your unacceptable behavior(s), I am silently endorsing all that you are doing
Should I continue to let you have your fun at the expense of others
Should I embrace your habits good and bad even though the bad misrepresent your essence
Should I allow for your inconsistency to mess with my flow
Should I hold ‘secrets’ that are detrimental to you and others
Should I not say anything to you when you continue to waste your intellect with emptiness
I think my friendship button is starting to fade away and that I’m becoming less tolerant of certain behaviors esp. as I grow older. I am embracing of most people but in as much as I ascribe to the ‘you are your brother’s keeper’ school of thought, I add my own twist to it and that is ‘ I am my brothers keeper, if my brother allows for candor in the keeping.’
I demand for mutual respect in any and all relationships that my being consciously chooses to engage in. With that, comes the ability to pull me over and candidly let me know when I have done you wrong and vice versa. I demand that we don’t engage in unhealthy, vile activities and included in this (in my little world) are being judgmental, name calling, gossip oh how I loathe gossip and negative unfulfilling situations among others.
I don’t know maybe my demands for friendship are not realistic…or maybe they are realistically skewed…
posted by Quintessence @ 6:01 AM
5 Comments:
Friendship is....precious, and uplifting, and amazing, and a lot of beautiful things. But it can also be tumultuous, and wrenching, and painful, and turbulent.
I only believe....that our friends, their hearts, their feelings are the ones we should treat most delicately, tread most gently on.
Not to be callous with them because we know they care about us and they will forgive us our foibles, but to never put them in a position that may cause 'their friendship button' to start to fade...
I'm on the fence on this one. On one hand i value friendship and sometimes have gone to extremes to being their for my friends. On the other hand because they are my friends, i have sometimes let some of them get away with unbecoming behaviors towards themselves, others and sometimes me and i've made all sorts of excuses for them and i realize now that all i was doing was reinforcing their behavior. In as much as we are our brothers keeper, we have to draw the line sometimes on the things we let people get away with. Don't let negative energy into your space because that just bogs you down and what good does that do for you or the other person. We are constantly reminded to be around people who are positive, who will help us grow and motivate us to be better people. We need to stop making excuses for our friends in as much as we love them, and we can't always handle them with kid gloves in fear of hurting their feelings...because how will they ever learn and know that their behavior is offensive, and wouldn't you rather as a friend tell them than the outside world show them the harsh reality... just my opinion....
You know..it is so weird because I have been dealing with issues surrounding friends. However, I believe that I do not have to subject myself to negativity and to allow others to treat me disdainfully in the name of friendship. This year I have ended up separating the wheat from the chaffe in terms of who my true friends really are. Regardless, it hurts every time because when a person that I hold in high esteem does not hold my best interests at heart it hurts to make the decision to remove them from my life completely. But that is just me.
Friendship is definitely great. There's a group of guys I am a part of that has decreed to be true friends, calling each other out on evident faults, being there for each other during hard times, celebrating together in good times, and just making life that much more worth living.
ta all for your wise words...I constantly take inventory of friendship and in the past it was how I interacted with my friends and not giving much credence to the reverse role...it's only over the past few years that I've started to look at the reciprocity
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