Misfortunate Friends
Posted by RyftDec 28
Nothing proves who your real friends are quite like misfortune.
When misfortune hits—and what form it takes rarely matters—a real sense of loneliness can envelope me. The perception of that loneliness is not an illusion; I am genuinely alone because, when misfortune befalls me, a number of so-called friends are suddenly nowhere to be found. And that loneliness is palpable because it is precisely in those moments that I need friends the most. Why do so many friends vanish?
Because I was never their friend. That’s the dirty little truth. I was nothing more than a notch on their social network belt, whose value was measured by the contribution my acquaintance made to their status quo, which diminishes by the degree to which I am perceived as a liability. When misfortune befalls me, I become ‘high maintenance’. I am worthy of their time so long as I don’t require anything of them, even more so if I can be of use to them.
But if I am not of use to them or if I have some kind of need, I’m treated like a pariah and soon find myself experiencing a poverty of social contact. So it is in those moments of misfortune that I have to retreat to that small, select group of people who are genuine friends. Misfortunes make demands on my attention and energies, which cannot be wasted on frivolities like self-absorbed ingrates. And that group is small indeed because precious few are those who I consider worthy of my true self. When misfortune hits and causes my social contacts to evaporate, creating that perception of real loneliness, it is then that my true friends stand out in stark contrast. And I look at those who disappeared and I say, “This has been added against your account.”
PDF 
One comment
Comment by Pierre Mhanna on 10 Mar 2009 at 12:20
This light use of words such as friends, love, solitude…is another sign of a sick and intellectually impoverished society. Nowadays people have friends in the tens and twenties if not more. But friendship, by ifs very definition would mean the sharing of life and thought, the mutual divulging and evolving of who we are with those few spirits that we care to spend precious moments with. Mainly, one requires quality time be spent with people in order to become friends, to be able to deeply share themselves and get to know each other from center to center rather than superficially.
Obviously one cannot share himself with many people, one does not have enough time and so friendship falls into superficiality becoming another product for the consumerist culture. Modernity’s friendship is a profile exchange, a shaking hand at a funeral or a company party.
Few read and tried to grasp what Aristotle meant when he said that Friendship is a single soul dwelling two bodies.