Value of friendship

When you are left alone to yourself, you are unlikely to lead a happy life. Therefore, you need the support of others to live happily. But there are a large number of men and women who are living alone either by choice or forced by circumstances. Some of them have friends but others do not associate with anybody.

Just eating and drinking something and sleeping cannot be called a meaningful life. A life has to be lived according to social customs. You will feel the necessity of having friends if you happen to live in a foreign country even for a short time. I spent some time in Malaysia without anybody to keep company. I found that it was very difficult to be friendly with foreigners.

In a world teaming with millions of people it is not so difficult to have some reliable friends. But you have to associate with friends whose lives are compatible with yours. Good friends think alike, argue, compromise and remain supportive when you are in need. You do not have to have hundreds of friends. Just a few would do.

Friends help you to lead a social life. When you are living alone without talking to anyone to smiling with anybody, people might take you as a recluse. If you are a hermit or a meditator, you might be able to avoid society. Otherwise, people living alone are subject to ridicule.

Anybody can cultivate self-respect and self-control with some effort. However, making friends is a difficult task. Success in life depends on your ability to influence others. Everything depends on your attitude towards others.

As one writer has said, "attitude" is the most important word in the dictionary. When your attitude towards others is friendly, they too will treat you in an amiable way.

Almost all religions deal with the way how our behaviour affect other people. If you find that you cannot get on well with others, there is a need to adjust yourself. At the beginning you may think that you can do a job, earn some money and live alone without anybody's support. Unfortunately the truth is quite different.

Once I attended a funeral in Colombo. The dead body was lying at a small funeral parlour. When I went to pay my last respects, there was only a solitary man with a long face. I immediately recognised him to be the dead woman's husband. When he saw me he started sobbing.

"I didn't have even a cup of tea since last night. None of my neighbours came to see me. When pressed for the reasons, he said that he and his wife never associated with their neighbours.

The "head instinct" found in animals is common to man. At a time of danger, animals get together to face it or flee from the place. Similarly when we are surrounded by our friends, we feel some kind of security.

If you read some agony columns in certain newspapers and magazines, you will realise that many men and women complain that they cannot make friends. You cannot expect others to come after you seeking your friendship. Look at the animal world.

A herd of animals will not come to make friends with a lonely animal. The lonely animal has to join the herd!

If you have nothing to offer others, nobody will come to you. This does not mean that you have to be a very rich person to dole out money. If others can seek your guidance, advice or good company, they will come to you.

That is why clubs are doing a good business. All the boozing pals get together and start talking while drinking.

Drinking is a health hazard and I do not advise anybody to join a club and start drinking to make friends. Drinking friends will be with you so long as you can entertain them. When you have no money, they will avoid you like the plague.

Sometimes you need a little bit of charisma to make friends. Some are born with it. Others have to cultivate it. For a start, you can show your willingness to help others. Then they will rally round you. If you prove yourself to be a good companion, nobody will drop you like a hot brick!

From today take an interest in other people and what they do. Talk to them and after help or advice. Remember that if you do not take an interest in others, they too will neglect you. If you are generous, others too will be generous. If you are sympathetic, others too will sympathise with you. You get only what you give.

When you are alone, you can think for yourself. When you are in contact with others, you can practise the good qualities you have been thinking of. By doing so, you can develop your own character while helping others to improve theirs.

If you are already an introvert try to get out of that frame of minds. Begin to look outwards. Watch other people - what they speak, what they do and react to them in a favourable way.

When once you develop an interest in others, you will forget your ego. Sometimes you may have to associate with people who are superior to you in some way. But you should not develop an inferiority complex simply because your friend is a professor to a prominent lawyer.

On the other hand, if your friend is inferior to you, in some way, do not feel superior to them. Help them to develop their knowledge and character.

Introverts look inwards and develop themselves. Extroverts look outwards. Both types have their plus and minus points. The trouble begins when you go to extremes. You need some kind of balance to mix with people and understand them. People have various types of weaknesses.

You should not concentrate on the weaknesses of others. By criticising others' weaknesses you become unpopular in society.

Completely self-centred people have no friends. Even if they have money, they will not spend it on others because the possession of wealth itself gives them happiness. In a way, they are misers. Who will want to make friends with a miser?

If you are aiming at real friendship, do not be class-conscious. Caste or religion should not be a bar to friendship. Accept every man for what he is. Once you see human relationship in its true light, you will realise how to broaden your circle of friends.

Finally, let John Richard Green throw more light on friendship: "What seems to grow fairer to me as life goes by is the love and grace and tenderness of it; not its wit and cleverness and grandeur of knowledge, but the laughter of little children and the friendship of friends."