The Importance Of Friendship By A Friendship

It is strange how fast your life structure can crash around you; how everything you knew and trusted could be swiped from underneath you. All it took was one day to unravel twelve years of friendship. Twelve years of laughing, twelve years of notes passed under desks, twelve years of telling secrets and twelve years of tears all gone within one day. I do not remember what day I decided to end it all, but I do remember the aftermath of what I’d done.

My parents are my heroes, and they inspire me everyday. Migrating to the US a year before I was born, they traded a comfortable life in Vietnam to work long hours at low wages in America in order to give their children unimaginable opportunities. Growing up, I was not aware of the sacrifices my parents made, but knowledge of them now gives me all the reason to be forever grateful for them and everything they make possible. I can never fully repay my parents, but I can do them right by doing the best with all I have got.

Friendships are an important part of everyday life. The vast amount of research focusing on friendship (i.e., Fehr, 1996; Hays, 1984; Argyle & Henderson, 1985) is indicative of just how important friendship is to everyday life. The importance and necessity of friendship is also evident by how these relationships are portrayed on television. Shows such as Friends, Cougartown, Psych, and How I Met Your Mother portray various different kinds of friendship. Shows such as these provide viewers with a unique opportunity to be able to be an observer in these relationships and to see how these relationships form and develop. In some instances, viewers may have the opportunity to watch a friendship begin and blossom throughout the course of a television series.

friend can completely change a person’s outlook on life, change the way they live their life and even help them live their life to the fullest. Friends often have more impact on the life of an individual than family because friends are people who you choose to have in your life, and are not people who are just there. With the busy lives that people lead these days, people often feel neglected by their loved ones. This can lead people down negative paths when they feel they have no one there for them. In the novel, Shattered, by Eric Walters, it is proven that no matter how badly a relationship may begin, it can blossom into a great bond between two

Friendship is often cited in criticisms of impartial consequentialist moralities such as utilitarianism. (Hurka) According to dictionary.com, utilitarianism is the ethical doctrine that virtue is based on utility, and that conduct should be directed toward promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of persons. Friends are essential in life because they are there throughout the good and bad times. They are there to bring out the best in you, such as being there to help you achieve the goals you have set and inspire you to be the best person you could be. Friends prevent loneliness and they also help improve your self-confidence and self-worth. Knowledge, achievement, and virtue are also quality goods that a friend

"Helping Your Child Make Friends - FamilyEducation.com." Family Life, Child Development, Nutrition, Teen Health & School Safety - FamilyEducation.com. Pearson Education. Web. 2 Nov. 2011. <http://life.familyeducation.com/social-interaction/friendships/53535.html>.

Make it last forever, friendship never ends” (Spice Girls). The Spice Girls are not the only ones who see the importance in the relationships one has with their friends. Most people depend heavily upon their friends, as they provide kindness, support, and joy to one’s life. But are friendships the most important relationships one holds in their life? How do friendships compare to familial bonds or one’s significant other? It is imperative to make relationships in order to be emotionally and psychologically satisfied, but having a close group of friends may not always provide the same benefits as other types of connections.

“A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.” - Winnie the Pooh. Friendship is one of the things that helps build you as a person. It shapes who you are, and potentially who you will be. Having friends can be crucial to both your mental health and your physical health, and it’s important to know how to maintain friendships and some of the key factors in doing so. “According to a research study of 1500 participants over 10 years conducted by Flinders University, they concluded that people with a large network of friends outlived those with little or no network of friends by 22%”₁. Although friendship is loosely defined as “the state of being friends”, it is better termed in layers. The term ‘friendship’ is not only the state of being friends, but involves multiple complex qualities. Throughout this essay, I hope to explain three of the essential qualities (or “layers”) of maintaining friendships, including trust, respect, and kindness/understanding and why they are so important.

The development of friendship depends on regular interaction. Even if the qualities of friendship are present, friendship will not occur without the presence of the other party. Subsequently, reciprocation must be a choice. Aristotle explains, “And in loving their friend, they love what is good for themselves, since the good person who becomes a friend becomes a good person for whom he is a friend. Each one, then, both loves what is good for himself and repays in equal measure what they wish for the other and what is pleasant” (171). Friendship is a virtue because it requires action, effort, and goodness. Because of the balanced love and effort, the complete friendship is an equal relationship.

Everybody has a time in their life when things aren’t easy. I believe that at one point in everybody’s life, they feel alone. They feel like they have no friends. I have felt that way before. When I have come across those times, I try to look for the positive, but a lot of times that just doesn’t happen. If that happens, I go and get help from the people I know who love me. I get a lot of advice from my parents and it usually helps me. I figure out that if I just start trying to talk to people and not wait for them to come up to me, it would make me feel better. But, this was also hard for me, because I’m pretty shy sometimes. Everybody has a different strategy for making friends. And everybody has a different strategy for keeping those relationships be healthy.

Friendship, an all to commonly used word in our society, used to describe a relationship between people who spend time together, those who are just school-friends, work-friends or acquaintances; however, friendship is not just between people who call themselves friends and spend time together or just work associates, but is an ever-lasting connection between two people that is built and maintained through a deep sense of trust and support.

C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien’s writings are bursting with stories of friendships that warm our hearts as readers and offer us an invitation into the narrative. Friendship played an important role in Lewis and Tolkien’s works, and can be seen as an invitation to participate in their stories. I would like to propose in this paper that friendship in myth is a vision of the ‘already, but not yet’ age that we live in and that Lewis and Tolkien’s stories can impact how we live out our own friendships.

In the past, I was known as a social outcast. I was the person who only had two friends and never spoke a word to others. Essentially, I was a human turtle. But in the summer of 2013, I met someone who was rather interesting: a young girl with a bubbly personality.

Furthermore, the qualification of the virtuous friendship aims to use the similarities of the friend as a moderator, which would benefit the agent in their pursuit to achieving an intermediate state of virtue. The closer the similarities are between individuals, the better they can moderate each other’s actions/desires. Ideally, if one of the individuals were to act out of line, their friend would respond accordingly and put them back on track. However, presuming one of the individuals in the relationship are good since they would remain similar in their virtue, there ought to be a sense of urgency to aid their friends, for the sake of the friend. Arguably, if the virtues of the friend were to change sporadically or gradually, the right response of the loving agent would be to adjust their behaviour to aid the friend through whatever situation they are undergoing. Significantly, empathy becomes a key requirement for an enduring friendship, because it demonstrates we can positively react to our friend’s change (and vice-versa). Insofar, the use of understanding is used to comprehend particular features of the situation (250), and it is aligned with the good intentions of helping the friend. Significantly, if the agent is capable to comprehend what has caused the change to their friend, they ought to re-ensure their peers that they will be supportive through their endeavours/changes. Insofar the significant virtue of friendship is the act of loving (128 section 4, line 36).

Sometimes it happens that even a small thing tends to destroy friendship and at times even a small thing can help friends get closer to each other. Ginigrey reports that many times it happens that friends, like angels, enter the lives of individuals at a time when they are needed the most. They come in at a time of great difficulty to help, provide moral support, but as soon as the difficult situation comes to an end they tend to fade leaving space for some new friend to come in (1). It doesn't matter for how long the friend stays in the lives of an individual, rather what matters the most is the coziness, pleasure, sustenance and camaraderie that friend has provided. Even though the term friend is spoken differently in many languages, every language connotes this priceless liaison in a similar manner and that also in a positive way. For instance, in French it is termed as amigo, in Danish it is called as ven.