Friend

People often get the term “friend” confused with “host organism.” Maybe that’s not the correct term, but it’s the closest I can come to when there is really no term meaning the reciever of friendship. Befriended is a verb, not a noun. You can have friends, but what are you then? Only a descriptive word: befriended. No noun. Maybe not having that word thus negating a true definition may be the reason some are confused.

We all have lives that we must lead, and general needs that most would say they favor over another’s. I would gladly give someone money who needed it, though my inclination would side more towards someone I know — ie expecting even subconsciously gratitude — or, if it was my last few dollars, I probably wouldn’t give it to anyone. Thus I favor myself. This is not a crime for anyone to do. A friend can’t really be expected to do it, which is why our gratitude when someone sacrifices everything for someone else should be even more powerful than it is. Generally, we take this as it is. What a hero. We give them a word and that’s good enough.

Ironically, however, we have come to expect this of people. Not just friends anymore, but everyone. We are expected to be there all the time for another person. Indeed, it has become like school, where you are sternly reprimanded unless you bring a note from your mother explaining why you couldn’t be there for someone in their “time of need,” which Dave Cross perceptively joked is once or twice every hour.

As of the beauty of stupid humanity — which pollutes our society as a whole and I wish could be turned back — we do not expect this of ourselves as friends. Only of others. It is always: I needed you then. Why weren’t you there? And then, no accountability the other way. I would argue myself that it shouldn’t be expected, which is absolutely true, but I would also argue that if I didn’t do it, then I’m not a friend. We like to have our cake and eat it, too…or more accurately, we like to have and eat not only our cake, but our friend’s as well.

This is really an essay for someone who won’t read this. It wouldn’t work anyway. People don’t learn or change. I wonder if I am capable either. I respond differently, and yet the same. When others are confronted with an aggressor accusing wrong-doing of any sort small or large, they generally dismiss it completely. They become aggressive themselves and discover all the wrong-doings of the accusing party and argue that they balance out to a justice. When I am attacked, I tend to come up with a solid argument as to why I believe what I have done is right, which is not the same product but with generally the same result.

I want to admit here that I am not the best friend in the world to many. Ironically, I have often complained about not having friends, but I’ve discovered that the world is much better and more poetic than that. Really, I just don’t like the friends who want to stick, and can’t keep the ones I really like and respect. Unlike my parents, I don’t immediately weed people into the two categories of “liked” and “hated” generally, there are always exceptions such as Mike Mckay and my vacillating experience with Joe Burger, but the fact of the matter is I generally want to be nice and helpful to people. And the ones who generally appreciate it the most I grow to discover are not very good people, rather stupid, in the case of this person a little crazy, and various other things that I lose respect of. Those who end up not liking me or leaving me alone I generally have liked more. Maybe I didn’t know them well enough, but I think I’m pretty thorough. Maybe they think I’m not good enough for them. It could very well be. Being blind to one’s own nature is a family trait that I’ve been desperately trying not to be guilty of, but you can never know for certain, can you? Who can you trust?

Almost no one likes to be told they’re a bad person. Ironically, we’re all bad people. We all do or say things that are wrong, and as people say about killing, once you do it once it gets easier. Religion has been around too long for us to be clean of conscience, they nailed too many things to the wall for being bad. I’ve made my own rules, but I admit that I know somethings I believe are fine are generally accepted as bad, and I wish I didn’t have to do them or want to do them, but I do anyway. Stealing money from my parents when I was young for a pop is wrong, but I did it most days anyway. Lying to them nearly constantly is wrong, but I do it anyway. I have decided they don’t deserve for these things not to happen, and that is bad, too.

So I’ve circled around to the idea that we’ve complicated so much that should be so simple and simplified the things that most need further investigation. We can tell anyone they’re doing something wrong or bad, but can we tell them why doing something bad is, for lack of a better word, bad? Stealing is always bad. Well there are exceptions, right? So maybe the entire rule should be scrapped and broken apart. Maybe the right circumstances need new words so that we don’t always have to say stealing. Being a certain kind of friend as opposed to another is only partially defined: “fair-weather friends,” “best friends,” “boyfriends” and “girlfriends,” “friends with benefits.” But it all boils down to a word we don’t even have a true definition of. There’s the rub! We spent time complicating the terms that we have not complicated themselves, if you follow me. We never elaborated on the root word, it’s systems, it’s own true definition, but we were willing to elaborate on the next step, quantifiers of the words. You can tell me what a friend with benefits is, but you can’t tell me what a friend is. Not exactly. No ten people would get it the same, except maybe those who speak another language which has developed the thing further. Like eskimos with snow. We just have snow, but they’ve got separate words for it all. That’s why English is so hard. We say a lot, we can even give it a lot of meaning, but break it apart and it doesn’t mean a thing. Do that in other languages, it doesn’t work as well. We generally learn languages by knowing the specific meaning of every word and arranging them to denote….it doesn’t work that way in English, because saying: someone I sleep around with casually is not really what the word “benefits” or “friend” means. Hell, “casually” doesn’t mean in my definition of a definition the right thing, because that sounds like we only do it on recliners, plush couches, with soft pajamas, etc. etc.

And I wish more people read this and cared. That’s the wish of every writer everywhere. It is a wish in vain. People don’t understand. We’ve turned everything around and it’s so wrong. The people I hate the most are the most logical in the end. You have two roads to go down when the world is not right, and both of them start with the sudden realization that hundreds of years ago it was easier to live and things were more right in one’s mind, because there were a few hundred people who knew and told everyone else what to do. It made the amount of views less diverse. So, of course, one solid view and billions of followers would be great. It doesn’t work. So the two roads are: find a way to correct why it doesn’t work and follow that path. Or mine: find a way to ma

ke everyone’s view clearer and more singular without a ruler. Teach people. But then again, who teaches? Of course I want to say me, because I think I’ve got my finger on the pulse when surely hundreds of people would say I’m feeling for it in the metaphoric ankle and they’ve got their arms buried to the elbow in the chest of the thing.

So are we eternally left this way? Do we settle for turning a few heads and guiding a few down the same path and loving them alone. I don’t want that. I love people despite themselves generally.

Spinning around to the original thread to weave a mangled circle, I feel I’m a better friend than most. I believe that you can easily be the friend of a stranger, and oddly it is more difficult to be one for someone you know very well. We attach ourselves to each other like leeches, and suck away all the lifeblood. Leeches, however, don’t get angry when the host dries up. And some end up like failed viral type symbiotes, desperately holding onto a person or creature that doesn’t want a part of another. It should be truly symbiotic, working both ways. And it doesn’t often.

I’ve learned something and hope I can keep it learned and strong in my actions: I’ve said that I expect less from my friends now. I thought that was a sad thing. Maybe that’s just what we need. Maybe we need to take and use the word for what it exactly is and know that’s good. He is my friend. What does that mean? That I call him that. What he or she does else, that’s extra. There shouldn’t BE expectations. There shouldn’t BE demands. We just are not grateful enough for what we already have, generally.

Or maybe I’m feeling for the pulse in the ankle. Wish I knew.