Who are your ‘true’ friends?
by Amal Hewavissenti
What do we expect from friends
and close relatives? Nothing more than friendship and an honest
relationship, in times of both prosperity and adversity. It is totally
advisable to keep friends or relatives at a safe distance if their
ideas, values, ways and attitudes contrast noticeably from ours. In our
social life, we often find double-dealing persons who a show marked
ability to camouflage their inner self.
This is however, the nature of man. It is far too difficult to
understand or identify people who keep close to us and act with
clandestine hostility when we are at our weakest. Such individuals are
the most dangerous because open rival is better understood than
“friendly” enemy.
 So a hostile friend or a neighbour can wreak havoc on a person just
because that person is allured by the flattery or behaviour of the
cunning friend. The unmistakable conclusion is that such people, once
identified, must be tactfully and slowly removed without turning into an
open enemy. These deceitful people are distinctly cunning and scheming
and are preoccupied in doing mischief to others under the cover of
friendship and support.
On the other hand, these ‘special characters’ are easily found among
relations, office staff, neighbours and almost every place in society.
Dishonest people lack proper judgement and are often backward in
everything they do. When they find themself a failure at going forward
by their own strength and initiative, they naturally become envious of
others. The feelings governed by envy drive them towards underhand
dealing to weaken another’s success. In short, they deliberately cause
others to believe something false by giving a mistaken impression.
A person who is jealous of others is easily identifiable for his
bitter cynicism towards society. Naturally, his cynicism is a clear
off-shoot of his lack of talent and presence of complex mental defects.
He would always look down on his friends and try to make flippant,
off-the-cuff remarks on the success of those he is with. So, it is
dangerous to keep close company with such a person as he might be
tempted to do anything on earth to eclipse anothers’ success.
We associate with our friends to get sensible counselling and for fun
when we are trapped in a busy schedule of work and want to escape from
the stress. But if we happen to be with unpleasant friends or neighbours,
we are certain to be unhappy because of their grumbling and
mind-poisoning ideas.
Apart from that, such persons are notoriously difficult to identify
and they would betray themselves in the course of a long discussion. We
could carry out a conversation with them on any topic but their comments
are far more pessimistic than optimistic. They particularly see nothing
good on earth.
It is more common sense that we should personally see through their
sinister moves rather than argue with them. The most dangerous aspect of
keeping company with them is that we too may fall prey to their sinister
ideas and may uphold them because we hear them too often. Therefore, it
is beneficial to keep them at arm’s length for our own safety. This may
not seem practical in today’s complex lifestyle.
Almost everywhere we have to work as a team, no matter how much
different our ideas or values may be from the members of the particular
team. However much conflicting their ways of living may be with ours, we
should work with our team to achieve our goals. Same is true of our
possible dealings with neighbours who might have a totally different set
of values or ideas from us.
However, upholding different values may be something painful to us
but the most practical step is to distance them tactfully and
unnoticeably. Then we will not have any chance of spoiling our minds by
reason of disagreeable behaviour by somebody we associate with. Above
all, we have to be careful!
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