"He makes no friends who never made
a foe."--Alfred Lord Tennyson
Friends are one of the great essentials of life. Making friends is so important to most of us that we sometimes compromise our values in order to make friends. This is especially true of the young who so desperately need to feel accepted. It is often tempting to violate some of our most basic principles in order to fit into a group. But this is not the way to make true friends.
One of the most basic truths is that we cannot buy friends. True friendships tend to evolve over time between people who have similar values and interests. This does not mean that friends have to agree on everything. Some very good friends disagree on a lot of things. But, unless friends share certain basic values such as honesty, compassion for others, and a similar sense of "right and wrong," there is usually not a basis for a deep, long-lasting friendship.
In the words of Thomas Fuller, "Be a friend to thyself, and others will be so too." A friend who expects us to violate our most precious beliefs and values in order to accommodate him or her is not the kind of friend that most of us want. We must be true to ourselves and our beliefs. If we are, we will make friends who have similar values and beliefs.
We all like to be popular. But there are times when we must stand up for beliefs that may not be very popular. We cannot live our lives like a professional politician who counts potential votes before taking a position on anything, and who is willing to compromise almost everything he or she believes in just to get reelected. We will never find happiness or peace of mind if we follow that route.
We must each decide for ourselves what our basic values are, and what is important to us in life. If we stand by our principles, there will be times when we will not be very popular, and we will probably make some enemies. But our true friends will stick with us through such times, even if they disagree with us on a particular issue. If we are unwilling to take a strong stand for what we believe in, we will probably never have the kind of friends we truly want.
Certainly we have to work at cultivating friendships. And we must at times make minor compromises on behalf of our friends just as we expect them to do the same for us. If we want good friends, we must be a good friend. But true friends expect their friends to have integrity and stand by their beliefs even when they are not popular. Nobody wants to make even a single enemy. But won't the qualities that make a person a true , devoted friend to some people make that same person a foe to others?
Copyright 2014 Allen Smith
TB-42—Posted 05=23--2014
