a true friend will see with your eyes, feel with your heart, think with your mind

and walk in your shoes

Friends are the family we choose for ourselves. Most of us have only one or two real friends in life. Some few persons (they are very, very few) have three real friends but its quite rare. A real friend is someone who will walk the extra ten miles with you, who will sacrifice himself/ herself when you truly need him, who will listen to you without being judgmental, who will accept you as you are, and who will laugh with you, cry with you and never abandon or betray you. A real friend is someone to whom you can open your mind and heart completely knowing that whatever you say will be kept in secret and will not change your friendship. A real friendship is lifelong. At times we speak of friends in college or back home or when we were ________. Most of these friendships are limited to a specific time such as when we were in junior high school, when I was an adolescent, when I belonged to that club or group; or a particular place such as at home, in my neighborhood, at summer camp, at my Church, Mosque or Temple. At these times and places the persons with whom we bonded are better referred to as acquaintances, pals, playmates, drinking buddies, partners in crime, teammates, classmates, soul mates, etc. What distinguishes them from real friends is that their friendship is tied to a place, a time or a specific shared experience which is maintained by a common memory. This is why many college acquaintances will disappear completely from your life shortly after graduation, after marriage, after a change of residence or place of work, after a few years. Also, although your classmates/pals may be really good persons, they may not be all that reliable despite promises of always being there for you, always maintaining contact with you. Even when they strongly and repeatedly affirm that their friendship with you is permanent

and unbreakable, they enclose their friendship within narrow boundaries, limiting the help they are truly willing to offer you. A real friend doesnt put any ands, ifs or buts as regards how to express his friendship. A friend does whatever is necessary and within reach to help you. A real friend is permanently in your life even though distances separate you. A true friend is there for you when and where and how you need him. This is one reason why in life most everyone has only one or two real friends. While not judging you, a true friend will see with your eyes, feel with your heart, think with your mind and walk in your shoes as he listens and identifies with your joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures, hopes and fears. He will see and feel life as you do. When a true friend perceives that your happiness is at stake or when you ask him to do so, he will gently present his opinion or point of view in an unambiguous way, knowing that that is what you expect of him. A true friend is willing to sacrifice his very friendship with you in order to help you when you need that help. In a sense a true friend becomes who you are and takes on your identity and history as he lives out your mutual appreciation and love of each other. In contrast to a friendship between spouses, outside of marriage a real friend may have a different lifestyle than you, different likes and dislikes, different personal goals and religious faith. Seeing that you and your friend are so different, other persons who note your friendship may wonder how it was born and how it has been/is kept afloat. One great difference that distinguishes a friendship outside of marriage from a friendship within marriage is the need in marriage to be constantly attentive of the need to compromise with ones spouse: the use of your time and energies cannot be a purely personal choice. Compromise is neces-

sary in order to permanently have a best-friend relationship with ones spouse. When marriage is not involved, while there is also mutual support and assistance, neither friend needs to compromise his/her life-philosophy, values, personal interests or preferences. Whether friendship is spousal or not and even though geography separates them, friends put loyalty and mutual love as the primary values sustaining their relationship. The word friendship is often applied too broadly. Many relationships are called friendships when they are not although they may have the appearance of a real friendship. There may come a time when you hear about friendships that went sour, that didnt pan out. At other times you may have heard of someone whose supposed budding friendship was exclusively one-sided. In many of these cases the person that one mistakenly considered to be a friend was in fact searching for emotional and psychological nourishment and was unable to develop a mature relationship as a friend with another person. In any relationship or budding friendship you should not permit that your hope for a stronger bond with another person should cause you to sleepwalk through the first months of your friendship/relationship. Your mind should lead your heart always and not the heart your mind. There are other cases when a seemingly burgeoning friendship is not even a true relationship or a friendship at all. It is better to refer to these cases as relationships-that-are-going-nowhere. In such cases even a weak mutual bonding cannot be cultivated since at least one of the individuals in the relationship is consciously or unconsciously using the other, thinking solely of himself, looking to improve his own self-image, satisfy his own social needs, and/or placate his sexual urges. In these instances where one person uses the other egoistically or both mutually do so, the other is no longer perceived as a person but merely as a puppet to be

manipulated as the puppet master pleases. In such cases the puppet master friend is using the puppet friend just as a person would use a comb to groom himself, take an aspirin to get rid of a headache or eat a slice of pizza to satisfy his hunger. If you even suspect that you may be getting involved in such a relationship with someone, decisively terminate it out of self-respect. By acting immediately you will avoid damaging your own psyche and self-image in both the present and the future. Never give anyone the chance to use you as a stooge, a fall-guy, a crutch or a gopher. Such persons dont respect you. They use you. Real friends truly love each other. What characterizes their love is its authenticity. Although feelings get involved, true love is much more than a mere feeling. True love initiates as a choice that a person makes in his mind. This is why true love and loyalty are the underpinnings of a real friendship. A true love is what unites real friends in or outside of marriage. It changes them to such a degree that the personal happiness and inner peace of each one depends significantly on the happiness and inner peace of their friend. The contrary is also true. True love is manifested as sadness or a lack of personal peace when a persons real friend is sad, grieving, in a negative situation or just plain down and out. He shares his friends feelings and embraces his suffering so as to comfort his friend. This is exactly what the Founders of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam did. Once he had found the answer to suffering, Siddhartha Gautama reached out and began teaching others the way to attain inner peace. Jesus Christ taught and accepted his own suffering and death so as to show to what depths of divine love God was willing to go so that every person would be able to enter Gods eternal kingdom of perfect and infinite love. Muhammad dedicated his life to convincing others that God is One and that there are no other gods. Faithful to

Allah, the One God, the pius would enter the promised Paradise. Each of these three major religious figures befriended humankind and sought to distance humanity from unhappiness. This is why faith and religion are doors to schools of true love, to friendship with God and others.

FRIENDSHIPINTIMACY
College

Check out College Notes from Noble Wolf at: www.global-catholic.org

Notes from Noble Wolf

Fr. Adolph Menendez, s.x. & Emily Stout, Poet Global Youth Mission Services 101 Summer Street, P.O. Box 5857 Holliston, MA 01746 noblewolf@xaviermissionaries.org