Friendship is more than having things in common; true friends practice the art of friendship with a heavy dose of forgetfulness.
A friend is a person you know well and regard with affection and trust, according to Google, or a favored companion says Webster's Collegiate. Friendship, then, is the state of being mutual friends. The term friend is often used loosely, covering a range of relationships from acquaintance to best friend. Most definitions of friendship, as well as our personal experiences, also include the characteristics of trust and loyalty.
Friendship
Anne Perry, noted author of many best selling novels, reflects on friendship in her WWI novel, No Graves As Yet, as follows: In response to the observation that a murder investigation was turning friends against friends, "I don't think we'll forget," said Aidan Thyer. Joseph responded, "Perhaps not forget, but isn't the art of friendship very much the selecting of what is important and allowing some of the mistakes to drift away until we lose sight of them? We don't forget so much as let the outlines blur, accept that a thing has happened, and be sorry."
In this unique perspective on friendship, Perry captures the single characteristic that we treasure in a good friendship: the willingness and ability of a true friend to overlook our mistakes, human weaknesses, and errors of judgment in favor of seeing the whole person.
"A friend is one who walks in when others walk out." ~Walter Winchell
The Art of Friendship
Further, Perry reminds us that friendship is an art, a skill evolving over time through practice. Though we may have a natural and immediate attraction to some people, the initial attraction is only the first step in a friendship. Friends build relationships over time, through a series of shared experiences in which trust is built through sharing intimate life details.
"If you judge people, you have no time to love them." ~ Mother Teresa
Perry, through her character, Joseph, depicts the art of friendship as the practice of forgetting or letting go of the mistakes a friend has made, allowing them to fade into the past, blurring in significance relative to the value of the entire individual.
This characteristic of a friend is also is a prominent component of every significant relationship. Seeing the big picture of a person, overlooking mistakes in favor of the overall character and positive contributions one makes, rather than focusing on errors of judgment and human weaknesses. Isn't that how each of us wants to be treated?
Friends Choose
"Every man should have a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends." ~ Henry Brooks Adams
Perry's character recognizes that we have a choice in deciding what to remember and the degree of importance we attach to events. We always have this choice in dealing with friendships. This is the art of friendship, the conscious choosing of events to hold close in memory and those we allow to slip away into a blurred past.
How We Choose Friends
"The conventional wisdom is that we choose friends because of who they are. But it turns out that we actually love them because of the way they support who we are," says Karen Karbo in the Nov/Dec, 2006 issue of Psychology Today.
"Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you." ~ Elbert Hubard
If you like What is Friendship, be sure to read How to Cheer Friends Up.
