| A friend, mi amigo (amicus) is one I see worthy of my love; this
is audacious and can take a long time to understand, and live with.
Then my not-friend (inamicus), my enemy is one who treats me as a friend would not. Say this to an English speaking person and he may well see his enemy as one to hate, or even to kill. We can see a not-friend for what he is, to us; maybe a wolf in sheeps clothing. But it's not our job to sort him out for we have enough on with own lives. He chooses to act as he does and our response, if we have any sense at all, is to give him a wide berth. He can, of course, be unaware of his ambivalence and press his feign friendship on us; we can be straight and show him the door. Or he is a pension plan or a double glazing window salesman, seeing himself as smart in winning friends and influencing people; and we can, if we have the nous, smell it coming and put the phone down. |
| We can, if we choose, find new friends and develop environments in which we function well enough; there we can negotiate at points of tension that might otherwise become a crisis, a panic attack, a great worry and ultimately a case conference or divorce or bankruptcy. |
| Beware those who, by default, choose to stay with the tensions, the panic and the worry; so the dead must bury the dead. |
| Yet we are survivors who move on with nomadic and migratory energy to do what must be done, and do it with willing commitment. |
| We come to life as it is with new insights
and resourcefulness.
Friends are those we deem worthy of our love; we can beware not-friends (or enemies) who act toward us as friends would not. Realising the potential of our fundamental needs we
are confident,
|
| And if we experience qualified satisfaction of our needs we can't know how we feel as we're busy rehearsing our sense of loss; in that state of mind we can't understand and probably slip back into resentment. |
| To create a reciprocal (of course) friendship is a work of art. |