Why are we friends?

Excerpts from ‘I love you, I hate you’ by Carlos Valles

‘As our personality is varied and complex, we need different persons in our lives to respond to the different aspects of our character. We may find one friend more amenable to discussing our ideas with, while another may be a genial companion in games but may not respond to an intellectual exchange of any kind. One friendship may be more affective, another more entertaining, a third one more cerebral. We like to joke with some of our friends and be serious with others. IN fact, one good way to measure the closeness of a friendship is to see how many aspects it covers, how many facets of our personality are reflected in that friend, in how many of the circumstances of life we seek his or her company. We are many things to many people, and the more things we are to one particular individual, the closer will he or she be to us, and we to him or her. The ideal friend covers all our life with his or her affection, understanding, patience, silence, conversation, sympathy, criticism, partnership in games, company in travels, care in sickness, echo in laughter. The more of our life we can share with a single individual, the more intimate the friendship will be, and since often we may not find that universal response in one person, we widen the range of our friendship and open up different angels of our life to different people to fit into them and complete between them the circle of intimacy we need for our happiness and well being.

Photo credit: Therese
Place: Tagaytay, Philippines