learning yourself through others: friendship

If you need to make your friend a carbon copy of yourself (your opinions and perceptions, etc.) then you miss out on the nature of genuine friendship. Life should be spent with people who do not understand one another and are coming from different places. It takes time to understand another’s point of view—to really understand and not just acknowledge—and this is the job of friends. It is a like walking a long road together in the same direction.

Isn’t it true that only when someone says or does something that we don’t agree with that we furrow our brows? We think and begin to erect our framework of thinking through our interactions with others. Real friendship is messy and people need time to learn about themselves and how to live with different types of people coming from a different set of perceptions.

You cannot expect another to change quickly the way he or she thinks or acts… or to understand quickly. I want to question why I think the way I do, and in order to do so, backwards steps are necessary. This was imagery that my friend Jess thought up: a person is already a certain way by default; he or she just is. A person acts a certain way, dresses a certain way, talks a certain way, and has already developed a way of thinking. As life moves forward at rapid speed, one cannot observes his or herself except by taking backwards steps and questioning "How did I get here?!" Friends are a great tool when one commits his or herself to taking backwards steps.