No One Is Really Your ‘Friend’

Nothing in this world may harm you — if you are able to see all things for what they truly are.

What is the truth about friendship? Can anyone really be your friend?

From the early stages of childhood, a human imbibes the idea of having friends. If I ask you about your days at school or your early childhood, it is likely to invoke imagery about your friends.

The games you played with them. The deep conversation you had. The places you travelled to. The memories you made.

There is something so uniquely fantastic about human friendships. Every human is a bolus of complexity: Each one has their religions, political opinions, hobbies, and unique backstories…

The formation of a friendship is to take two impossibly complex particles and let them collide with each other. And in the same way a neutron collides with a uranium atom to produce a nuclear explosion, human friendships produce striking phenomena.

What are you hoping to achieve when you divulge the latest gossip with that special friend? What are you hoping to achieve when you relay the troubles that arose from your recent heartbreak?

What are you hoping to find when you make plans to eat out, go to the movies, share a bike ride, or just “hang out?”

Hold on a moment.

Did you realise something? You read the questions I just asked you, and perhaps you couldn’t quite answer all of them…

But in thinking about, and trying to answer, you implicitly admitted to something you may not ordinarily acknowledge:

Your friends act as tools for you to get things you want.

Whether it is to cure the loneliness of eating alone at the lunch table, engaging in hobbies that require multiple people, or knowing you have someone to turn to during a time of stress…

It all distils to one basic idea: Your friends are simply mediums for you to get the things you want.

Does this… make you feel slightly uncomfortable? A deer is very beautiful on the outside, but if you kill and skin one, what will you find underneath?

Bloody guts and organs.

Not so pleasing to look at now, is it?

Nothing in life has to be a problem if you are able to see things for what they truly are.

Friendship is touted as this wonderful, unique bond between two humans. The idea of friendship is wrapped up in a pretty box and complemented with a card that professes deep words.

But just as one may skin a deer to reveal that far less pretty insides, one may unravel the idea of friendship for what it really is.

A transaction.

Human beings silently enter into contracts that say:

If I give you some of my time, you’ll give me some of yours. If you help me with this problem, I’ll later help you with something.

Neither of us want to seem like loners, and both of us want to do things that just aren’t as good to do alone.

Do you always want to travel abroad alone? Do you always want to eat at a restaurant alone? Do you always want to go to a theme park alone?

Life is hard as it is. Can you imagine soloing the entire journey?

Perhaps a more piercing question is this: What do you really want from your life, and how do your so-called friends help you get those things?

Perhaps in reading this you’ll have an epiphany; perhaps you’ll question the value behind some of the so-called friendships you currently have.

Everyone is always looking for something. And, sometimes, they need another person to help get them it.

This is not to say that any of this is bad, or that one should not have friends.

But things will hurt if you fail to see them for what they truly are.

Do you see things for what they truly are?

Why is it that so many friendships can take tumultuous, fractious, and awkward forms?

The players in question haven’t realised the game they are playing.

Most friendships are nothing more than an attempted solution to the problem of mutual loneliness and the unstable human desire for validation.

Who, really, are your friends?