Essay Contest: "Philosophical Questions" – What is friendship?

Alright, after taking a few months off to clear my head, we’re jumping back into our Philosophy Contest—basically designed so we can dump a bunch of different perspectives in one spot, you know? It's meant to help us sharpen our own views or maybe even flip them on their head if we're feeling adventurous 😲😁.
Look, out of respect for the folks who think doing this via PDF files in the Philosophy sub is a total drag, we aren't doing this weekly anymore. We're moving to once a month.

THE GROUND RULES:
The contest stays open until Sunday, March 22, 2009, at 7:30 PM;
Each user gets exactly one shot at an answer;
Keep your answer to the size of a single standard post;
The person who drops the question picks the winner, and then that winner gets to pick the next topic;
The person asking the question has to throw in their own answer too;
But let's be real—you can't just vote for yourself to win;
Once the deadline hits, the thread is fair game for general discussion;
After that, we’ll run a public vote to crown a "People's Choice" winner as well;
That voting period lasts for one week from the start;
Don't try to vote for yourself—it's a non-starter;
Both winners get a permanent spot in the top-tier Hall of Fame;
I'm asking everyone to please hold off on commenting on the entries until the submission window closes.

Hopefully, we all actually enjoy putting our thoughts together and reading what everyone else comes up with.
One last thing—for the love of God—please actually read the rules. 😁

Kenneth Peterson5 lives two streets over from me. I run into him all the time at the local grocery store, and on weekends, he’s always at my favorite coffee shop. I grab a macchiato; he sticks to tea. He sits there reading the paper, constantly sliding his glasses down his nose—probably nearsighted. He never joins our debates about football, women, or politics. He usually wears these faded jeans, looking pretty broke and totally out of style. To be honest, he looked like one of those losers who has nothing going for them: no decent job, no wife, not even a real friend to grab a drink with. Normally, I wouldn't give a guy like that a second thought, but his total indifference toward me and my group at the corner table really rubbed me the wrong way. My contempt for him only grew when I saw he was driving some ten-year-old junker of a Mazda that's been missing its passenger-side mirror for ages. Someone probably smashed it, and either he doesn't care or—more likely—he can't afford the fix. He even pedals to work on this old bike; I pass him easily on my Harley on my way home.

Then things started getting weird. People, even the waiters, began treating Kenneth Peterson5 with this weird level of respect. They’d bring him the morning paper without him asking and rush his tea out immediately. One time, I was shocked to see a prominent local Congressman hanging out and having a long, casual chat with him, acting like they were old buddies. Curious, I started poking around, trying to figure out who this guy actually is and why everyone treats him like royalty. I was floored to find out Kenneth Peterson5 isn't some loser at all. He holds a massive executive position at a major federal agency—the same one where I once bid for a construction contract. It turns out he's loaded, and almost everyone I know knows exactly who he is. They were all pretty stunned that I had no clue who Kenneth Peterson5 was.

The following Saturday, I brought the newspaper to Kenneth Peterson5 and picked up his tab. I started small—talking about the weather and kids—then discreetly let him know I could snag him a replacement mirror for his car at a steal, or even for free if needed.

That was the start of a great, long friendship.🙂

Here’s my take on friendship.

I always gravitate toward guys like Kenneth Peterson5. I value them for who they actually are at their core, regardless of their job title or what kind of flashy car they drive. On the flip side, I tend to keep people at arm's length—if I can even avoid them—when they constantly try to flex their status or wealth. The problem is, that group keeps growing right along with my own career and bank account. The real ones, the Kenneth Peterson5 types? There aren't many of them, but I guard those friendships like gold in a desert.

True friendship is built on a foundation of equality—its polar opposite is nothing less than hostility. When you have real friends, you entrust them with things you’d never dream of sharing with a business partner at a firm like Goldman Sachs. In those superficial "psychological" friendships, self-interest often trumps genuine affection. Real connection grows when neither party tries to control the other or tether their growth to their own personal progress or stagnation. True friends embrace who the other person is and stay fiercely loyal through thick and thin. They lean on each other for advice and tackle life's hurdles together. For some people, though, friendship is just a cautious belief that the other person won't physically harm them. But there is a fundamental baseline for identifying a real friend: 1. genuinely wanting the absolute best for one another
2. having genuine sympathy and empathy
3. being brutally honest, especially when it’s difficult to be
4. maintaining mutual understanding

This is what real friendship looks like 😁

Look, friendship is a tight-knit thing—it’s built on this fundamental trust that you've actually got someone's back, whether they're asking for a favor or just struggling in silence.

A true friend is someone who sees you more clearly than you can see yourself

I suppose friendship is really just the desire and the sheer willpower to give someone more than you ever expect to get back from them. If you're just playing nice because you want a return on your investment, or if you're just using someone's influence and talents to get ahead... well, then I don't think that's friendship at all. It’s just a selfish calculation. And honestly, just returning good for good and bad for bad... that doesn't really feel like a virtue to me.

There was this Zen master who once said:

To those who have nothing, I will take,
And to those who have plenty, I will add even more.

At its core, I think friendship relies on honesty.
Maybe love can exist without being completely honest, but I don't think friendship can. A "friend" who just flatters you or lies to your face just to stay in your good graces isn't really a friend. A true friend is someone who tells you the truth, even when it hurts.

Love tends to be possessive, whereas friendship isn't. You can share a friend with others.

It makes me wonder... is love actually greater than friendship?
Jesus said: "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."

Friendship... it might never truly end, maybe not even after death, while love often does. Sai Baba once remarked: "If a friendship doesn't last until the very end, then it perhaps never truly existed in the first place."
It is quite sad, I guess, if you have to go through life discovering who your real friends are and who wasn't, but I suppose everything comes to light eventually.

Perhaps I should ask someone who understands people better than I do. Someone like:

Enes Kišević

Everything is—well—like....

The day is, like, sunny
You are, like, cheerful
Moving along, like, unnoticed

Everyone is, like, doing great
Everyone is, like, alright
Everyone is, like, wild..

And you are, like, happy!

Life feels, like, being at sea
The birds are, like, free
The future is, like, in your hands

Conscience is, like, clean
And the sun is, like, bright
Oh heart, like, sing

Everyone, like, cares for everyone
Everyone is, like, a friend
Everyone, like, cares about you
And about the world..

And the day, like, passes
And you, like, keep smiling
And nothing, like, hurts you....

Friendship is a learned skill. It is shaped by how we perceive the world and how we coexist with everything around us. Whether we have true friends or not says everything about who we are, because the value of a bond depends on our capacity to be vulnerable and stay true to ourselves. Simply listening isn't enough. You have to actually feel what they are going through—to carry a piece of their life within your own heart, standing by them through the highs and the lows. It means keeping a permanent space for them inside you, remaining loyal, staying steady, and accepting those flaws that don't mirror our own. A real friend is free from prejudice, expectations, and attachments; they simply want the best for you without reservation. Everything we need to learn in this life—concepts like sincerity, gratitude, tenderness, respect, and morality—is taught to us through the path of honest friendship. By building these bonds, we become better people, and our spiritual growth gains its full purpose, because by opening ourselves to a friend, we finally open ourselves to who we truly are.

If you want to lose a so-called "friend," just lend them some cash.😂
That’s basically your situation—sticking by someone through thick and thin without expecting a dime in return.
...Or maybe it's just when shared interests are the only thing holding people together?
Bottom line: one loyal friend beats a hundred fake ones any day of the week.
Cheers.

Personally, I don't care about winning; sometimes I just want a clean, simple game. Not that I could ever beat our unbeatable Batić🤣 anyway. Send him my best.👍

Any particular Song would be welcome on this thread?

I turned the blade against myself
I wanted to drive it straight through my heart
But his hand stopped me
The silence in his voice was suffocating
That look of pure contempt from him tore me apart

God, I hated him. I truly hated him
For not letting me slip away into heaven
For offering zero comfort when he pulled me back
For scolding me so bluntly, so transparently
For stripping away the courage to try again
I hated him just as much as I hated the life I didn't end

But most of all, I hated him for leaving
He vanished just as quickly as he appeared
Gone in an instant—if you can even call it an instant
I’ve spent my whole life looking back
Searching for him in my friends
In those who tried to comfort me
Those who offered a kind hand

But I never found him
He was one of a kind
Just a fleeting moment of consciousness
He wrenched that knife from my grip
And handed me the joy of living
A single flash of awareness
Deep within my life

This Song is about that split second where we wake up and realize we have to find our own strength within ourselves.
A true friend isn't just someone who feeds your ego or makes you feel good.
A real friend is the one you'll laugh with forever, but also the one who calls you out when it matters most—even if you end up hating them for it for the rest of your life.

When I think about friendship, I can't help but feel like its true essence got buried somewhere in the past... leaving us with nothing but old stories to go on.

I'm not really talking about how everyone’s turned into a total materialist, or how everything nowadays gets filtered through some lens of self-interest and profit. It’s more about the lack of time... and more importantly, the complete absence of any real criteria that would even allow us to hope for change in the first place...

The death of critical thinking, the vanishing demand for knowledge-based careers, the decay of culture and art, and work itself... honestly, where do you even start...
The problem is a total lack of passion. People don't bother working on anything that actually matters unless there’s an immediate payoff. Everyone's just chasing that modern holy trinity: clout—whether that's being the talk of the local pub or trending on social media—status symbols, and hanging out with a curated crowd based entirely on those first two...

Friendship... it used to require this level of selflessness that people today act like is some kind of legendary heroic feat. It's not even a real thing anymore. You don't even see it in the stories we tell kids. Nowadays, the plot always ends with the girl riding off with the richest prince in the kingdom. Honestly, who gives a damn about genuine love if he isn't showing up with the keys to a Ferrari and enough gold around his neck to sink a boat...

The fact that someone would actually step up for a friend—even if it’s just a platonic thing—and go out of their way to carry the heavy lifting without being asked... people just write that off. They call it being a pushover or just plain uncool and passive. It’s like you can’t even show up for people anymore because you're too worried about looking desperate or being judged by the crowd...

Let them think if they even have the brainpower left... They can ponder whatever they want, but I still stand by what I said. Real friendship isn't just some business transaction or a way to climb the social ladder. It’s something else entirely, something that doesn't fit into any of those shallow categories...

In my old, romanticized, hippie-cowboy brain, friendship carries the same weight as keeping your word, being brave, staying honest, and playing fair. It’s about selflessness and, above all, love. But I’m not talking about that kind of love where two people try to pull magic tricks just to get laid... I mean the kind of love found in those silly picture books, where you share something with a brother, cut it into uneven pieces, and give him the bigger half...
Nowadays, most people would just laugh at that. At best, they’ll give you some lip and say, "Hey, why don't you just split that evenly among us, brother?"...
The more time passes, the more I expect that "dear brother" to just plow right through us and snatch whatever little we have left...
So what now? Honestly, the easiest move is just to shrug your shoulders and admit there's nothing left to be done...
Maybe we can't. Probably can't do much about it, honestly... but that doesn't mean we just drift with the current and let life shape us however it feels like.
There’s this beautiful analogy in physics that perfectly captures the state of society today and just how easily the masses can be led...
An object at rest stays at rest until some outside force kicks it into gear... basic physics.
Look, I’m just not interested in letting outside forces mess with my head, especially not the kind of nonsense that's running rampant these days. I'd rather just do my own thing...
Even if it’s for nothing else, I’m doing it because I can't shake the feeling that I haven't betrayed my own principles... even when everything happening around me makes it look like the whole world is upside down...
So what if they are. Doesn't mean they're actually any good. Can't people just change? Whatever. By refusing to play along with that kind of compromise, at least I get the satisfaction of knowing I didn't trample over my own principles...

Let them laugh and call me a weirdo if I drop cash on some random gift for my best friend. I don't give a damn if they think I’m being frivolous. Like their desperate climb for social status comes for free or something... Give me a break. If they can't wrap their heads around the fact that I can spend an entire night hanging out in a room with a female friend without things turning physical—and that those nights are actually more meaningful and worth way more than chasing a pack of shallow, airheaded models—then fine. Let them believe what they want. Who cares. They’ll never get it anyway. Their priorities are basically the exact opposite of mine...
Giving something to a friend, or someone you love unconditionally, and actually finding joy in their happiness—knowing it was your actions that put that smile on their face? To most people today, that’s some incomprehensible mystery. They see it as something worthy of scorn, if not outright insanity. And that's not even touching on anything bigger than that...

Fine, let them think what they want. I'd much rather be called crazy if it means keeping the sound of laughter and the honest, happy eyes of my best friends in my head...

Affection + empathy + loyalty + respect + support + feelings + ingredient x = friendship

Friendship is basically that deep sense of connection you feel with someone. When you’ve known them forever, you start anticipating their next move before they even open their mouth. Now, some people might argue that what I’m describing isn't friendship, but love—but honestly? They're wrong. To be a truly great friend, you have to actually love them. You have to respect them and show up whenever they need a hand, even if helping them ends up putting you in a bit of a tight spot. For a real friend, I’d go all in—do whatever it takes. But let’s be real, those kinds of people are rare. In an entire lifetime, you might only walk away with two or three true ones.🙂🙂

aaa.
Friendship. I’m stealing this line: "That word is used constantly, yet that feeling is incredibly rare."

It’s probably the topic that crosses my mind more than anything else, I guess. I just find human relationships—how we all click or clash—totally fascinating. And friendship... man, aside from romantic love, it’s easily the strongest bond two people can ever have. It isn't exactly the same thing as love, but they’re definitely tangled up together in some pretty deep way.

But, I mean, I really feel like love alone isn't enough to actually make you friends with someone. You need to be on the same page about things, right? You need that willingness to accept someone's flaws and their weird opinions, and even being open to changing your own mind if it turns out you were wrong. Plus, you need that ability to see things clearly and look at life from different perspectives instead of just being stuck in your own bubble.
Maybe the most important part is just being mindful of the attention and care that person gives you. If we don't actually value what our friends do for us, then we aren't really true friends, are we?

Selflessness, but without being a total pushover. Love. Understanding and acceptance. That sense of connection and being similar.

A friend isn't just someone who sits on the same branch as you, staring at the horizon and breathing in sync with you or whatever. No, a real friend is the one standing underneath you, ready to catch you when you're acting like an absolute idiot, staring up at a gloomy sky and losing your balance because you're sitting on a thin branch of delusion and pessimism.

To whole "friendship" thing? It's basically just what I call my bond with my inner circle. I don't have a massive squad or anything, but honestly, sometimes I look at my buddies and wonder why they even bother with me... but I know they're real because they aren't like everyone else out there. They're different. I'm seriously stoked to have them in my life and I wouldn't trade them for anything... I know, I know, sounds like some middle school essay bullshit, but honestly, I don't think you can get any deeper than that 😬

You meet someone and you just click—you see this one trait in them that hits right, and they feel the same about you. You hang out for years, building that bond. Then, out of nowhere, they pull some absolute garbage move—trash your car, hook up with your girlfriend, stiff you on a loan, whatever. And instead of owning up, they just ghost you because they can't handle looking at themselves in the mirror...
Real friendship? That’s being able to welcome that person back with open arms, acting like nothing ever happened, because you still see that first thing you loved about them. It's about facing the stuff they're too afraid to face themselves.🙂

Friendship—now there's a concept that sounds suspicious to me.

It’s a strange category of relationship, usually involving just two people.
Being someone's friend is both a massive responsibility and a huge honor.
Think of friendship as a marriage that isn't legally binding or regulated, yet it carries rights and duties we often uphold more faithfully than in an actual marriage.
I’d place it right below the parent-child bond on the hierarchy of relationships.

A few years ago, my wife asked a close friend to co-sign a loan for her. The friend didn't hesitate, saying she'd gladly take it on because if my wife couldn't pay, she’d happily cover it herself.

Friendship is a connection between equals—there's no hierarchy involved. I truly believe it's the most natural path toward a higher stage of human development. Eventually, I think all our connections—to other people, to nature, even to our work—will be built on the same principles we currently only find in true friendship.