It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends

I’d take a bullet for you.

I don’t know when or where this dialogue was first used, but it does have a deep meaning to it. Well, at least it used to have until the 20^th century. Still, a lot of us have thought about expressing our feelings to our friends/loved ones through this sentence. Not just because it sounds badass, but because we strongly feel this about at least one friend in our life – the best friend. I know I have imagined saying it multiple times at multiple occasions. Although it never happened but I did imagine it multiple times.

That’s how we Bibliophiles are. We take a lot of time to finish up a book because there is a movie which keeps playing behind our eyes for every line we read. Well, it can also be because the book might be boring, which is highly doubtful in case of bibliophiles. And sometimes it is because few books takes us back to into our memories where we relive them. Some good, some bad. When I came across the following line it brought a lot of memories. Neither happy nor sad – but difficult memories.

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends

Looks like Dumbledore was right. Friendship is a mysterious relationship. Nobody is born with it, but we all definitely die with it. When we first step into the world, we never know who will be our friend but the minute we enter into the eternal agreement of sharing our joys and sorrows, it feels like that relationship was always there and always will be. This is probably because friends are the only relatives we get to choose of our own free will, without any prejudices about religion, caste, gender or nationality.

Then why is it so difficult, at times, to tell them the truth? To show them a mirror?

Friendships make a major part of our life cycle. Someone who is not involved in our life of complex relations and yet is ever present. Someone who has a bird’s eye view of our whole life along with our character map. Someone who understands where we stand. Someone who can tell us where we need to go next without being biased. Let’s face it, we all love that ‘Someone’ because they can make us look at things differently. Who would want to lose such a person? I know I wouldn’t. Now if something comes along which scares us about changing the dynamics of this relationship, why take the risk, right?

Let’s look at it this way. When someone from our family, let’s say our sibling, does – or is going to do – something morally incorrect, what do we do? We tell them, we explain it to them, we make them understand the domino effect of their actions or choices in the long run. We try to bring them back to the road less travelled. We do this because we know that once they walk the scenic route, they might never want to step on thorns. And we do it because of our love for them.

Yet our love for the relatives we choose of our accord is so selfish that we stop ourselves from being honest just for the fear of losing them. It is true that sometimes our friends cannot handle a certain level of honesty from us. Sometimes all they want us to do is to listen to their logic and have their back. But is also true that having your friend’s back means to look at the opposite direction from them.

As opposed to the general notion, friendship is not always unicorns and rainbows. In fact, we might even lose our friend at times. And I think, it is a true friendship if it survives the turmoil of being apart for a while. For us humans it is easier to deal with someone we hate rather than someone we love because anger is a strong emotion which can easily drive our actions. But when we love someone, fear is always in the driving seat and we are at its mercy. However, it is not that difficult to break a bad news to our friends or to go against them. Of course, this is only when we fight off the fear of hurting them or losing them or better yet, we accept the fact that if it is meant to be, our friendship will survive anything.

From my experience of the in-numerous times being in similar situations (by virtue of me trying my best to always be truthful), firstly, we need to simply trust our friends. Trust them to understand even if it takes time and trust them to take the right decision at the end. And most importantly don’t let the fear throw out our trust from the car. Once we trust them, it is easy to be ready for anything. And I don’t mean back up plans, I mean our ability to control our reactions. Things are easier to handle when we let them down easy and in the most elaborative manner. We should never underestimate the power of a good explanation.

Sometimes people understand easily, sometimes they tend to drag it out, which is totally acceptable as humans tend to take time to process thoughts even geniuses. Sometimes we become too hostile when they seem to take time to understand because we want things to go a certain way and that is one thing which we should control. We should let our friends know by our calm approach that we are there for them no matter what and we will deal with everything together.

Ideally, we should all be always truthful to our friends which includes confronting them. Sometimes we do try our level best in a subtle way but give up too easily when it doesn’t work. We fool ourselves by reminding us that if anything goes wrong, we will be there to handle our friend. But this action can also sever the ties just as well. If we know that something might go wrong, then it is better to warn our friends than to carry the regret of not doing anything at all. It is true that the fear of truth costing us our valuable friendship will always be there but what kind of a friendship it is which doesn’t have a minor fallout?

After all, we all should agree to disagree.

Food for Thought - A friend in need is a friend indeed, right? So, isn’t it our duty to help them out when they are in need even if they don’t realize it?

Until Next Timeth,
GeekChic