Who wouldn’t like more friends.
Some people seem to make friends easily.
They’re not to be looked on with envy, necessarily, because there are friends, and there are friends, and you don’t really know what you’re seeing. Things are not always as good as they seem, and it’s a given that one can still be lonely or feel unwanted in an apparently riotous group of apparently good friends.
Sheldon Cooper (in The Big Bang Theory) keeps a mental list of friends (in his ‘eidetic memory’!), to which worthy individuals are added (or deleted) according to how they appeal to his ego, or not. It gives hilarious insight into how petty people can be, but perhaps also to how our need for friendship so percolates just below the surface.
The truth is, 91.3%1 of us wish we had more friends, or even a friend. So don’t think you’re the only one. So does everyone else!
But, it is well said, be careful what you wish for.
Here’s a cautionary poem, unattributed, with a twist in its trajectory. It’s entitled List of Friends. Enjoy and ponder. 😊
I made a list of friends – ones I wanted to hold.
One of them stole my happiness, and one of them my gold.
One went away, didn’t even say goodbye;
One betrayed a secret … and one told a lie …
So I made another list of friends – ‘cos friends I wanted to be.
One became too famous to even remember me.
And when I stumbled, made mistakes – high was the price.
One laughed and taunted me, one gave bad advice.
Then someone came to me – and put her arms around.
In my darkest hour of grief, a friend I truly found.
She gave me strength and heart when I began to fall;
And, funny, she was one who was not on my list at all.
[Anon]
Friendship is one of the four loves in CS Lewis’s book appropriately called The Four Loves. This unbelievably perceptive philosopher and writer observes that friendship, unlike ‘romantic love’ (which is done “face-to-face”, he suggests), is done “shoulder-to-shoulder”. What he’s getting at (and elucidates far better than I do, and with a much higher word limit than I do) is that friends are found in common pursuit. That is, find an interest that someone else has, or a task he or she is doing, and do it with them. Shoulder to shoulder. That’s where friends are most likely to be found.
The other thing is – if self-evident – instead of needily looking for friends, go out and find someone who needs a friend. And be it. In an un-creepy, generous, un-self-seeking way.
There you are: a couple of tips.
1Statistic obtained from the highly rated fakestats.com website
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