The subtle art of Friendship

by Venus

“Only as we are in communion with ourselves can we find community with others” -Parker Palm

Unlike the bonds predetermined though blood relation, we have the freedom to choose our friends. As Kenny Loggings stated ‘When I call you a friend, or you call me yours, it is a voluntary and mutual decision.’ Friendship means choosing one another and there is something sacred about this.

What a profound honour it is to choose friendship admits the vast sea of humanity. As many relationships are thrust upon us, the friend relationship stands out as a testament to the beauty of intentional connection.

I’m glad I am no longer friends with people who merely tolerated me. I am loved wholeheartedly now. I am seen. Just because someone isn’t your friend doesn’t make them a bad person. You might simply not be their person.

These relationships are built from the choice you both make (Long before community assumes external shape and form, it must be present as a seed in the undivided self.) and the lack of authority that exists between the two of you. (Loving friendships provide us with a space to experience their joy of community in a relationship where we learn to process all out issues, to cope with differences and conflict while staying connected. Finally, it calls for mutual trust.

In Pecks book The Different Drum, he reminds us that the goal of genuine community is to seek ways in which to live with ourselves and others in love and peace.

M. Scott Peck begins his book The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace with the profound declaration: ‘In and through lies salvation of the world.’ Peack defines community as coming together of a group of individuals’ who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper that their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to rejoice together, and to delight in each other, and make other’s conditions our own.’

Aristotle’s recipe for happiness, he acknowledges that the good life wouldn’t mean as much without friendship.

Friendship of virtue where people like you for themselves, who typically influence you positively & push you to be a better person.