Saturday, November 03, 2007
i like to write/type. but i hate reading long posts. this is gonna be another one of those long posts.
couple of days ago the papers published something that all of us have thought of at least once in our lifetimes: friendship.
there are three types of friendships:
friendships based on virtue,
friendships based on utility
and friendships based on pleasure.
When virtue is the reason, friendships exist for the sake of friendships. You are friends with someone because of his or her sheer personality and character. In other words, you like someone because of who they are, not whether they can go shopping with you, or if they can help you in some way or another.
I consider this the purest form of friendships, and am sad to say that i have few of such friendships, which are rare to come by. These friendships are usually forged during our younger years, where we lived in blissful paradise, where we made friends for the sake of making friends, and as we grow up we experience the coldness of reality, and then we realise things arent as simple as they are.
Which leads to the second form of friendships: utility. You are friends with someone because they are useful to you. If you are reading this dont deny it, you have many of such friends.
You are friends with all your classmates because you are going to come into contact with them everyday and you need them somehow.
you are friends with all your teammates because they are going to play on court with you and you need to understand each other and play as a team in order to play well.
you go on a school trip, and make loads of new friends which were fun to be with on the trip, only to return to Singapore realising that you dont have much to say to them afterall.
you try to make friends with everyone, so that they can tide you through rough patches that you meet along the way.
a very recent example would be PW. you are grouped with people whom you usually would not talk to, and then throughout the project you have loads to discuss and talk to them about, and once its over, boom. you realise you dont really know what to say to them anymore. familiar huh?
Once we do away with the utility need, the friendship dies. it holds good only for that moment and need.
still unconvinced? how many of your graduating class will you keep in contact? let's not talk about old age, shall we, but say for the next ten years?
The third form of friendship is friendship based on pleasure.
The joker, forever making people laugh.
Your intelligent, charming friend. its an honour just by knowing him or her.
pleasure -emotionally, physically, materialistically, and mentally.
how long will it last?
Now the final question. Which form of friendship is good?
I guess its a mixture of all three.
but heyy, its hard to achieve the ideal state.
All im hoping for is to keep in contact with half my graduating class for the next ten years, at the very least. =)
hui jun published at 11/03/2007 10:47:00 PM
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