Genuine Friendship

Real friendship gives more, and takes less. “The true friendship seeks to give, not take; to help, not to be helped; to minister, not to be ministered unto.” When your friends are willing to help you without considering what you would return to them, you know that you have real friends. True friendship can afford true knowledge of life. Some say that this is a kind of unconditional help. I agree with this point of view. When true friends help each other, there will be no terms and clauses. There would be no agreement to make all the clauses concerning interests clear to both sides. No party A and Party B, no whereas… When you ask your friend to help you out of some troubles, he or she will not say, “100 bucks” or “if you can agree that…”

The most important ingredient in a real friendship is trust. I think, all of us know this point very clear. If there is no mutual trust, there is no real friendship. If your friend entrusts you to do something very important for him – if you fail to do it successfully, he or she would die or lose all of his or her money – , you know that your friend trusts you so much. If you can entrust him or her to do the same thing, you can say that your friendship is real.

I have talked so much about how to tell a friendship is real, but I don’t think that it is wise to test your friends to know if the friendship between you is real. It is because that when you try to test your friendship, you will lose all your real friends. You doubt about your friendship, and it would be fake or terminated. In the sense of test, you can accumulate your experiences with your friends, from which you can tell who are your real friend. This is a kind of issue of trust, too.

“Suspicion is the poison of friendship.” Keep this in mind, and wish you could have a bosom friend or two in life!