The Friendship Bond

What makes someone a friend? There is no exact answer to that question. Based on "The Friendship Bond" by Mary Brown Parlee, the questionnaire on friendship, which appeared in the March issue of Psychology Today, was trying to figure the reason behind the power of friendship out. However, social critics did not partly agree with the questionnaire result because it contains some contradictions. How can people feel satisfied with their friendships and feel lonely at the same time? Those contradictions lead to the reevaluation of what are truly factors that determine friendship. Like Mary said, "friendship appears to be a unique form of human bonding." Uniqueness means a tolerable absurdity. Thus, friendship consists of some absurd factors but those factors are really applied by most of people. In my opinion, factors which determine friendship are trust, the degree of intimacy, and their activity.

Friends trust each other. Even though they are wrong, they will still trust their friends instead of strangers who are right actually. It seems illogical and makes us think, "is the friendship bond alive and well?" People choose to trust their friends because they think they know what personality do their friends have. How can I trust strangers if I do not know who they are, said most of people. However, friends are still friends as long as their trust level is high or at least, exist. Friends can turn into haters or strangers if they do not trust their friends anymore. It is also applies to the strangers. If the strangers gain the trust more and even more, the strangers can turn into friends. Moreover, friendship grows by trust. If the trust gone, then that is it: it is over. It is logical anyway to have the way of thinking like that.

To trust each other, actually the first step is get close to them. Friends are friends because they are close. For example, A, B, and I are in the same faculty. A is my classmate while B is not. Both A and B are my acquaintances. In this case, I will say A is my friend instead of B because I meet and interact with A more frequently than with B. It will be a twist if B is closer to me than A. Then I will say, "B is my friend actually." How people get close with each other to becoming a 'friend'? It depends to themselves. There is no exact factor of it. People can get close with other people because their race, point of view, interest, culture, sex are similar. However, people can get close too because of their differences. We can say it is the matter of comfort. Comfort leads to the closer distance, both physic and heart.

Last but not least, people will define other people as a friend by their activity that they do together. We are friends if we are gossiping and judging other people together. We are friends if we do sarcasm together. We are friends if we talk heart-to-heart too often. We are friends if we do acting weird and crazy together. And etcetera. No matter how abstract we and our friends do, as long as there is a bond which gets stronger by trust, it seems every craziness is alright.

Maybe people will partly or even disagree with all points that I pointed out. However, I just write what I see and what I feel after observing people around me behave with their friends. Although there are still many factors can determine friendship, three factors that I mentioned above are the most essential factors. 

"Manners, please!"

Everyone has his/her own belief. One of trait to which people consider to hold on is courtesy or we call it a good manners. Nationalists would say courtesy is good deeds which not violate constitution. Conservatives would define courtesy as manners that enables one to get along with public's rule. People who have strong faith in their own religion would state that courtesy is kind of deed based on their religion remarked. If we ask more people from diverse backgrounds, there will be more answers which will tangle its own true definition. I think those different people actually answer this 'courtesy' question like a piece of puzzle that, if we arrange those pieces, they will form a big picture of conclusion. Moreover, I think there are only two essential criteria of good manners; conditionally suitable and have a good purpose in it.

From time to time, trends do not change: old people always complain what young people do. Old people hate how young people play with fashion style: they think youth style is rather uncivilized. As a youth myself, I know that feeling to prove that they are not right at all about youth. However, it is impossible to do because respecting elderly is law of nature. Then we have to act politely in front of them and make them feel comfortable and respected. It will be different if people who we treat is important people such as public figure, minister, or even the president. It is still the same that we treat both of them politely. But the way how we treat elderly is as same as how we treat our parents: full of caring but still in respect. While, we treat public figure like we treat elderly but without affection which sometimes possibly misunderstood by them as annoying act. We will act to them politely, even with protocol procedural. And it will be more different if we treat our own friends. We will not act too polite to them and even too harsh as long as we do not hurt them. But when they need help, we will happily help them and this is kind of manners too. The situation also effects to different manners. More serious the condition, more polite we will act. Based on how good manners works, I state that good manners is kind of good deed at the right time, at the right place, for the right person, or we can call it as conditionally suitable.

We know good manners is the key to happier world because everyone respect the other. Moreover, we can conclude that good manners' purpose is to make other people and ourselves both feel comfortable and happy. It is a good purpose, indeed. Then, if we do good deeds just for our joy but hurt the other, it cannot be called as good manners. One of the example is bribery. People who accept money from bribery think that they do a right one because they make people who bribe them happy and it applies reciprocal. But, we do know that bribery violates law and make this country lost a lot of money. Because the number of people who get hurt would be more than that of people who feel satisfied, we cannot call that act as a good manners. That is just a real crime that covered by the fake or misunderstood good manners.

In the end, it all comes down to how we act to other people. However, if both essential criteria of good manners do not fulfilled, we cannot call it as good manners. As the intellectuals, we should understand the difference between the real good manners and the act that just look like good manners. Hopefully we do this right because, we know, everyone deserves to be happy.