When I was in grade school, I had a best friend who gave me a certificate that testifies to our friendship. And while I’ve won many other certificates and medals for my academic achievements later, that certificate of friendship had a very special place in my heart. It signified that I was dear to someone, that I had a companion who acknowledged me as an important part of her life.
When I went to high school, however, things started to change so fast. I wasn’t with my childhood friends, cousins and neighbors anymore. I was with a group of people who have been friends for years. Not to mention that it was my first time attending an exclusive private school. I felt like I didn’t belong. I felt like an outcast. I found it hard to adjust socially since then. Even in my college years, I had no fixed group of friends I could call my own.
Later, when I finally found people who became close to me again, I really tried to keep them. I was just grateful that I’ve finally found friends who cared for me and who made me feel that I’m no longer alone.
I guess this was one reason I’ve put a special value on friendships. I consider friends as true blessings from God, they’re like angels who make this life more bearable and more enjoyable. They help us see what’s good in us. They give us the kind of warmth that makes our lives more beautiful and meaningful.
In today’s world, however, I’ve noticed how friendships have often been taken for granted. Compared to romantic relationships, they’re hardly given the attention and the value that they deserve.
Is it so hard to believe that something other than romantic love could also be as strong, as true and as enduring? Why do we not consider friendship as a kind of love that is also worth seeking and keeping?
I do not mean to underestimate the value of that kind of love between two people who have been blessed with such an ardent passion and desire they need to form a bond from which the miracle of a new life could come from. But I do wish we can recognize that people are also capable of loving each other beyond that kind of relationship.
We can love in another way. We can value other people even if we are not romantically involved with them. Is this not already shown in the way parents love their children? In the same way, friends can love each other wholeheartedly and meaningfully in such a way that only friends can.
Friends do not need to gain an exclusive claim over your life. You can be friends with another person without being threatened of losing the friend you already have. In this way, friendship is less prone to jealousy. Not that it is immune to it. But friendship can teach us to love more selflessly.
Friends see us for who we really are. Our best friends know us deeply. We do not have to impress them just so they could accept us. True friendships are born from sincerity and from accepting one another just as they are. While this can also be true with romantic partners, the intensity of one’s emotions may lead some people to try to win their partners at the expense of hiding who they are. With friends, we learn to love less self-consciously.
Friendships give us enough space to love other things. We become free to discover other interests. We are allowed to take on adventures, to play and to be in touch with other aspects of ourselves we have not yet known. Our focus with friendship is not always each other. We gain new insights and given the chance to see other perspectives. It is thus that friendship can teach us to love more freely.
Friendships give us the safe and warm feeling of home away from home. With friends, we don’t need to say much. We can sit next to each other doing our own thing and just know that someone is there for us. Friends help us to love silently.
Some friendships survive long distances and long periods apart. When you see them again, it’s as though you hardly spent time away from each other. Strong friendships endure both distance and time and they teach us to trust even when we cannot see. Friends help us love more faithfully.
God gave us many forms of love to reflect the richness and depths of His Love for us. Let us not take for granted those that seem simple and too ordinary for us. In silence and steadfastness, in freedom and in selflessness, may friendship teach us to love more deeply and more beautifully. After all, it is said that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
The thing about hope is that it’s a positive force that shines the most when it’s dark. When everything’s going well, we hardly notice it’s there. But when things go against us, when our dreams fade and when we see no immediate reprieve from our troubles, that’s when hope does its best work for us.
"Where Hope Can Be Found"