Conor O’Brien

Just visualize this: you meet this kid when you’re in first grade. You hang out in class, write your name on the board with them because you’re in trouble. You become buddies. You two hang out after school and watch cartoons and play video games and run around each others back yards. The years go on, and you’re still doing the same thing with this kid. He has long since been your good friend.

When junior high rolls around, the world turns out to not be such a warm and fuzzy place. You confide in each other about your almost teenage woes. You understand your buddy and he understands you. High school rolls around, and things change. You do sports that he doesn’t. You have different classes. You can’t really hang out in school anymore, and it’s kind of a downer, but you don’t worry. That’s what the weekends are for. By the time high school graduation comes around, you hang out with completely different people and do different things on the weekend. But do you know what? This doesn’t faze either you or your friend. Yeah, you may hang out with different people, but those people don’t know you. They haven’t been by your side since you were six years old. When you two do hang out, you have a better time than any weekend out with your other friends.

College comes fast, and you two don’t even go to school in the same state. And when your childhood dog dies, your friends at school tell you they’re sorry, and you thank them, but when your life long friend for practically all you life gives their condolences, it means more than anything anyone else says to you. They were there with you; they know what you’re going through. Christmas vacation comes quickly, and you two don’t even skip a beat, and those friends you hung out with on the weekends in high school just don’t seem to be as important. You’ve only got a few weeks at home, why not hang out with the kid you know you will have a good time with even if all you do is watch TV and eat junk food all night? The reason is that this lifelong companion understands you. You understand them. You’d lay down in traffic for them and know that they would do the same thing for you. This is the definition of a friend. {A long bulid-up, but it works because it helps the reader trust you. That is, it's effective in building ethos.}

The first two definitions of the word friend in the Oxford English Dictionary {Oxford English Dictionary should be either underlined or italicized.} are quite interesting. The first is, “‘One joined to another in mutual benevolence and intimacy’. Not ordinarily applied to lovers or relatives.” This is a definition that most people agree upon. The word “intimacy” might frighten people away from this definition, but when -if- you have a real friend, you know that this is entirely true.

The second definition is one that is used more commonly. “Used loosely in various ways: e.g. applied to a mere acquaintance, or to a stranger, as a mark of goodwill or kindly condescension on the part of the speaker; by members of the ‘Society of Friends’ adopted as the ordinary mode of address (cf. 7). Also often ironically.” This is how the word is used most commonly today because people don’t want to offend others. They fear that if they don’t call someone their friend that the person will get angry with them so they throw around the word carelessly. This is understandable. Using the “looser” version of the definition just makes things run more smoothly in day to day life.

Today, it is so easy to meet people and spend time with them. Modern communication and transportation make it easier than ever to maintain relationships with others. As long as a person can get along with another person and have fun, they will call them “friend.” One could say that this is all a friend has to be. If someone invests in another person too much they might value being loyal to that person too much. And this devotion to loyalty could cause a person to do bad to stay true to their companion (Cocking et. al, 2000). This is a valid point, but with true friendship, this will not happen. If two people are truly friends, one friend would never ask the other to do something bad for them. They understand each other and know that doing so would only hurt the other. If two people are true friends, they most likely have the same values, hence their ability to get along so easily, and if this is the case, and one asked the other to do something bad for them, the other would be glad because they would most likely feel the same way about it. In their eyes, it wouldn’t be bad. It would just be another normal act to demonstrate their friendship. They don’t necessarily have to have the same beliefs. A Muslim and a Christian can be friends even though they do not believe in each others religions.

Walter S. Minot wrote that “True friendship denotes more than just being friendly with someone,” {Delete the comma.} (1974). He says that we are amicable with many people, but true friends with only a few. You don’t have to hate or dislike a person to not call them a friend. Being friendly with people and trying to get along with others is just part of human nature. But there is a distinct difference between being amiable with a person and being friend with a person. You can’t go to a person that you’re just “amiable” with and open up to them. You can’t tell them all of your secrets. You don’t know them enough and therefore can not be certain that you can trust them with this information that comes from deep inside of you.

“He who has many friends has no friends,” (Parsons, 1915). These are the words of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. How many friends do you have? Can you honestly think of less than a handful of people who know you as well as you know yourself, and you them? Friendship is a treasure that is of incredible importance to anyone who honestly has it. Just like most treasures, it is a rarity that, when found, must be valued highly and kept safe like all treasures. There is no better way to sum up friendship than how Minot did when he concluded the matter, “True friendship is eternal and it should last a lifetime.”

Works Cited

Cocking, Dean, and Jeanette Kennett. "Friendship and Moral Danger." The Journal of Philosophy 97 (2000): 278-296. 5 Feb. 2006 <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X%28200005%2997%3A5%3C278%3AFAMD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X>.

"Friend." Def. N. Oxford English Dictionary. 5 Feb. 2006 <http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50089947?query_type=word&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;queryword=Friend&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;first=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;max_to_show=10&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;sort_type=alpha&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;result_place=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;search_id=vtx4-odvcon-11677&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;hilite=50089947>.

Minot, Walter S. "Friendship." College Composition and Communication 25 (1974): 154. 5 Feb. 2006 <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0010-096X%28197405%2925%3A2%3C154%3AF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J>.

Parsons, Elsie C. "Friendship, A Social Category." The American Journal of Sociology 21 (1915): 230-233. 5 Feb. 2006 <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9602%28191509%2921%3A2%3C230%3AFASC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A>.