Getting good friends is a complicated process. It seems to happen rather puzzlingly and totally unplanned. I mean, we daydream and envision randomly meeting people and making friends with them. We try to plan for it, but there’s one significant factor to identify and get good at; vulnerability.
Realistically, it seems easy to conclude that what makes us really likeable are our strengths, achievements, and all the other things that make us proud. They all truly impress, but maybe they are really not what draws others to us, or more specifically, good friends to us.
Maybe we’ve been lonely for too long, or we are constantly tired and unhappy about our family. Maybe we vehemently and passionately disagree with numerous revered notions in the modern world. Revealing any of these things places us in immense danger. Others could laugh and deride you; you could happen to be the clown of the day on social media. But paradoxically, we can only get close to people by revealing these exact things, which are capable of inflicting unbearable humiliation on us in the long run.
Friendship is the dividend of appreciation that emerges from recognising that one has offered something priceless and valuable to someone. Not anything fancy or extravagant, but the key to one’s self-esteem and confidence.
We strive and expend so much effort on trying to look strong before the world when all the while, what opens the box of friendship is maybe something else entirely. It’s perhaps the revelation and disclosure of the embarrassing moments, the funny periods, the sad and tragic events that perhaps, makes us lovable and transform strangers into good friends. Maybe it’s precisely the vulnerability we dispense so much energy to hide that attracts the kind of friends we genuinely want.
Even though making friends is important as the terror of isolation is powerful enough to consume anyone, it is more important to deploy strategies of wisdom and circumspectness when being vulnerable with people. Revealing what underlies the strong facade you put on to the wrong people is enough to scar you throughout your existence.
This is so good. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect in a bc a good friend sends you, actually.