We are at the end of our Third Pillar in our Wellbeing Program. We have had the chance to discuss, meditate about friendship and how to build positive relationships. Olga as part of her personal project for this Pillar has written an article based on her reflection about this topic. Thank you Olga for sharing with us!

No matter how society changes, all the same, for millennia, eternal values remain that are of great importance for people of all generations, confessions and cultures. One of such eternal values ​​is, of course, friendship. People very often use this word in their language, they call certain people their friends, but few can articulate what friendship is, who is a true friend, what he should be.

Unfortunately, I am no exception. And it’s also hard for me to define what friendship is. But, I believe, this needs to be realized once and forever, since it is important, first of all, for oneself. A real friend for me is, first of all, a person, communication with whom not only gives me satisfaction, but also contributes to the development of me as a person, a person.
It seems to me that by communicating with friends, people can develop no less than while studying or reading books. I do not mean the search for new knowledge – for this it is enough to look through the encyclopedia, but spiritual training, spiritual improvement. A common thought is that a friend is the one who is near when you have any problems, that is, “is known in trouble.” Maybe it is so. After all, a person who disappears somewhere when you need help or just support can hardly be called a real friend. But this is not the only and not the main thing.
A friend is the one who is by your side when everything is all right with you. I will try to explain my idea. I know of cases when people communicate only when there are certain problems: they use each other in order to tell about something bad, to complain.

They are free psychologists for each other, and nothing more. It should be interesting with a real friend even when everything is fine, because in such situations you really understand whether you need this person if you don’t need anything from him. This is a pun, but it actually shows my attitude to the issue of friendship.

We see examples of true friendship in classical literature as well. But, more often than not, literature outlines only a part of a certain stage in the life of the heroes. In the real world, people often and radically change, sometimes they change, as they say, “in different directions.”

Then friends can become so different that they are no longer interested in communicating with each other. In fact, different people can be the best friends, they then complement each other, communication becomes interesting, they have a lot to learn from each other. But friends should have the same values, similar spiritual guidelines, then they can explain themselves even when their attitude to certain realities is different. A person’s spiritual values ​​can change over time, and this can lead to the fact that friendships disappear.

It seems normal to me, this is a completely natural phenomenon, better than friendship “out of habit.” Nowadays there are many who do not distinguish between real friends and acquaintances. My peers sometimes tend to call friends the people they are with; just having fun, sometimes adults call their colleagues friends, with whom they sometimes communicate outside the office. I think this is not friendship, but just a certain kind of relationship between people.

Over time, this “friendship” will disappear by itself, and because of this it will not even become lonely, perhaps you will not even notice it.

I believe that friendship does not depend on age, social and financial status. She is also not divided into male and female. In general, you hear a lot of thoughts about whether there is a female friendship or not, as well as whether there is a friendship between a man and a woman.

I believe that, of course, women build their relationships in a completely different way from men, so their “friendship” is absolutely not like a man’s, but this does not mean that there is no friendship between them. It’s just that the manner of friendship and the views on friendship are as different as different people and people in the world.

They say friendship is love with clipped wings. There’s something about it. But, I believe that friendship also has its wings, they are just “of a different color” …