My Brazilian brother "Andertwin" and I in Osucro Sao Paulo.
I have read a lot of posts lately on social media about false friendships and people who feel burned by their "friends". The post have not only been from the USA, but from South America as well. They come from areas where people socialize more in groups that live a middle class lifestyle, and have more opportunity to "hang out", than those who must work all of the time, or have no access to socialization as a free time filler.
I have discovered in my own walk that real friends are not always people that we see everyday and talk to.. at times those people we think are our "friends" are really more acquaintances than what we realize.We often use the word friend to simply describe people we know. The emphasis on the word "friend" in society has really been in a way over used in the last ten years. The word friend is over used partially because of modern lingo birthed from social media. This word abuse came because society has put a lot of pressure on people to acquire as many person to person links as possible in the cyber world. This in many ways has created a messy kind of status quota with huge numbers of friends. It is a requirement that demands that you have a ton of "friends" on your list so that everyone else will want to be your friend too, and that people you really like will see that you have tons of people who "like" you too.
I should also mention along the way that there is a sense of duty that as long as we are all friends we have to take seriously everything our friends have plastered on social media and maintain a relationship with them because we are friends. How many of you have been reamed out for missing an FB invite or Tweet?. What about getting in trouble for not liking something that you find offensive?? We post, tweet, pin, and whatever else we belong to, so that our "friends" will know what we like. Real friends in my opinion don't want to know every aspect of my life like this, so that we CAN be friends. I say this because real friends want to know more than just what is on the surface... and social media likes is often only a surface. Real friends pick up the phone and call you, or message you in a chat where you are actually replying so that there are two warm bodies in certain communication.. sometimes today people still talk face to face.
Real friends are the people that you can go without seeing for a long time, but you know that they are thinking of you. They feel your absence in their heart when you are gone, but work hard to make whatever time you have together count. Even if that time is a phone call from another country. Real friends are people who you argue your beliefs with, but don't have to change your point of view to remain in their good graces. In my faith community we call this faithful disagreement. It is a requirement in friendships that last. Real friends hurt when you are hurting, they do not revel in your suffering. Real friends tell you to your face when your are dressed badly, but still walk out to dinner with you hair not brushed and shoes half tied.
If your "friend" kicks you to the curb because you spilled coffee on them, or missed a phone call, chances are that friend was not your friend at all. Same goes for people who get overly rude about political view. Real friends might not like what we think, but understand at least WHY we think as we do. Trivial things do not define real friendships. Loving people through life's biggest challenges and the worst days of their lives, those are real friendships. Real friends call you back to crab you out for missing a phone call, then crab at themselves because they were mad at you in the first place.
I have many people whom I call my friend in truth. I have some that are my "best friends". Others I love so much that I traded them in as "friends" and have kept them as family, because for me that means forever. Those are my tried and true friends who I can count on to pray for me and stand with me when the world would gladly walk away. Real friends do not come boxed in doubts. There is assurance that they love you for you.. and so I urge my young friends, especially those who struggle with the world of friendships right now, to think about the criteria that they use to define friendship. If a friendship comes with condition of liking only what they like. or having to do all of the giving, it is not a friendship. Friendship comes with two parts giving and receiving. Friendship comes with grace and forgiveness. IF these things are missing, I think it is better to feel they are an acquaintance. Acquaintances are important, but we can cut ourselves a little slack on the daily emotional attachment end of things.
Remember that part of Coming to Care posts are also about caring for ourselves. Don't get caught up in media pressures. Love yourself enough to chose quality over quantity..
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