Friendship Dynamics - Conclusion III

BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER, BUT CAN WATER BECOME BLOOD?

I had to add this question after the previous responses I received. Best friends were becoming family on the one side and on the other, family members were the only ones allowed to be best friends. So who should take that position? Family or friends? 

A lot of people admitted that family is given without a choice and can be harder to forgive. Whereas friends "can be shaped" and are easier to forgive for nothing ties you to them as they can be hired, fired and promoted by you, the CEO of your own life.

Friends always show their love. What are relatives for if not to share trouble?
Proverbs 17:17

At this point I decided to ask a follow up question:

"If you were asked to make a choice between your friends and your family, who would you choose?" 

FAMILY was the popular choice, whether it was something built in by older family members or something observed personally. Although they can be toxic, you are bound by blood and it can never separate you. 

"With family, there's "that thing", a bond that ties you."

I thought this was going to be an easy close ended family or friend answer, until a respondent opened my eyes to a right I think we all seem to forget we have, the right to choose who to prioritize. Let's agree, both family and friends can be toxic but it is completely up to you to choose who you want to prioritize. Society has normalized the culture of cancelling, whether it is family or friends, so guess what? You have full control over there. However, one can definitely get incorporated into the other without any losses, so to answer the question; water can definitely become like blood. This also reminds me of the verse in Proverbs 18:24 that says:

"Some friendships do not last, but some friends are more loyal than brothers." 

If it were me, I would take that "like" very seriously, my older sister once told me that family members are your true friends because unlike friENDs, family can never END and I totally believe her. Now you know where I stand with this debate.

HOW LIMITING DO YOU THINK FRIENDSHIPS ARE IN TERMS OF INDIVIDUAL GROWTH?

This and the previous question were poorly answered (in terms of quantity, definitely not quality).

Have you ever heard the saying: "birds of the same feather flock together" or "you become like the people you surround yourself with?" Cliché, but very much relevant in terms of friendships. When I was younger I used to argue that you could be friends with people who are morally corrupt, but still be a good person. I thought I knew everything because I wanted to stay in a specific friendship group that may or may not have been bad for me.

STORY TIME

To conceal the identity of this person, I'm going to use the name "Grace." Grace came to university in the year 2012 and lived in the same room with her best friend. Her best friend was a heavy drinker and smoker, whilst Grace was still experimenting with these two substances. Her true nature was not built in smoking or drinking but the BFF she had did not support this nature.

Grace and her BFF made friends with approximately 7 other people who were also heavy drinkers and smokers and their entire first year experience was filled with partying, clubbing, smoking and drinking. I'm not judging anyone who does this, girls and boys, live your lives and live them well (YOLO, right?). With the allowance that Grace received from her parents, she never did anything productive with it, not even as small as buying herself a new pair of socks or going out sober minded just to have some good restaurant food. She never thought about saving or at least visiting a mall close to her residence. Guess what, her friends had this mentality too.

Grace broke her friendship with her best friend later that year for reasons separate from the description above and broke away from the 7 friends they had managed to recruit. The following year, Grace met 3 new friends who were similar in nature to her and were pillars of support. Friends who drank yes, but moderately so, did not smoke, were bent on saving, going out to restaurants, sitting down and having a meal over good conversation. Grace became more like her true self, through their influence. 

See, the point of this story is to tell you that Grace had the potential to become like her true self but because of the company she kept she forgot herself and got consumed in the lives of what her former company indulged in. 

Humans are confusing, so let me ditch human beings and try to describe it more clearly using orange and lemon juice as examples. 

Orange juice (with a sweet taste) had lemon juice (with a sour taste) as a best friend. Orange juice and lemon juice recruited more lemon juices and they started to dilute one another. Oranges juice began to lose its sweetness until all it could taste was the sourness of the lemon juice. Although orange juice had become like lemon juice, deep inside it still had a bit of sweetness from its true identity. When orange juice met other orange juices that tasted just like it, they started diluting each other, without ever losing the sweetness they all possessed. I hope that makes sense. 

"We forget ourselves, get consumed"

That's how friendships can limit you, choose those people wisely. 

Let's also not be naive and forget that orange juice might have actually been lemon juice disguised as orange juice. For the change in friendship it experienced could have simply been a need to change itself from lemon to orange juice, but in order to get accepted in the group of orange juices, it needed to come disguised. I'll leave you to mull over that. 

HOW HAS SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGED THE DEFINITION OF A FRIEND?

"You still feel numb with all those NUMBers in your phone" @deep.treasures 

Social media introduced instant messaging, a great solution to the lengthy time taken to send a letter from one pen pal to another but it also has deteriorated and taken away the true meaning of friendships. 

I almost misinterpreted the response: "Everyone expects you and your friends to flourish, that everything is going good." What this respondent was trying to say is that social media is portraying unattainable friendships which could leave us feeling vulnerable and pressured to reach a level of friendship that is unreachable. 

I would like to liken this to a video I was watching on Pinterest about how they make food in advertisements look more appealing. One suggested that you mix dish washing liquid and water and add the formed foam bubbles to the top of a cup of flat coffee, to give it a frothier appearance. The other suggested that you take a raw piece of chicken, slightly burn it in designated areas with a flame, then take brown shoe polish and paint it to give it a cooked appearance. See that word? Appearance, not reality. You actually cannot drink a flat cup of coffee with soapy bubbles or eat raw chicken with brown shoe polish, but when it is advertised, you desire to have it satisfy your taste buds. Yet it cannot. Now relate that to social media and friends. 

Social media has also become a validation point for friendships. People parade each other (retweet your tweets, like your pictures and mention you on their Instagram stories), but do they come through for each other in real life as much? Although media parading may not equate to the real deal of friendship, it may easier to deal with than reality. It's better to hide behind a screen and delete, block, parade rather than to generate words and emotions and express them speedily and physically. Social media is a safety net to human to human interactions. 

See some people have gotten so addicted to social media that they feel more loved when they are posted on a WhatsApp status, than when they are invited out to a lunch. How can you feel validated by love you cannot feel or see in action? I'm going to leave it at that. 

It's not all bad though. Social media can be used to catch up with friends who live far and cannot catch up physically as often as they would like to. Let's just not abandon loving our REAL friends for unreal ones. 

Image courtesy of Pinterest. YES I HAD TO BRING IT BACK