What is the Definition of Friendship?
Friendship is when you love someone with every ounce of your being and
genuinely want them to be happy even if it means sacrificing something your
self to make them happy. A true friend is someone you can talk to about your
feelings, someone you can tell things you could never tell your family or even
your partner. They are someone who you don't have to talk to but someone
you want to talk to; someone you will go out of your way to be with. Friendship
is when you love someone so much you want to hold them and never let go,
someone you want to rest your head on and cry, and you would let them cry
on you too.
Friendship involves close personal relations, affection, caring for and
commitment to another. It is intertwined with other emotions such as love,
passion, spiritual love, sexual love, patronage, romance and kinship.
Friendship is essentially a kind of relationship grounded in a particular kind of
special concern each has for the other.
A necessary condition of friendship, according to most views, is that the
friends care about the other for his or her sake. Such caring involves both
sympathy and action on the friend's behalf. Friendship differs from other
interpersonal relationships, such as relationships among colleagues, because
it is a more intimate relationship. To enter into and sustain a friendship one will
normally trust considerably his or her friend's goodwill towards him or her.
An important condition of friendship is also shared activity. Friends engage in
joint pursuits, which are partly motivated by the friendship itself. Shared
activity is important because friends normally have shared interests as part of
the intimacy characteristic of friendship as such. Therefore, the shared pursuit
of such interests is an important part of friendship. Friendship is valuable
because it is instrumentally good. It enhances life and contributes to a
flourishing life for both individuals involved in such a relationship.
In ancient Greece and Rome, friendship was the dominant paradigm. Later,
in Christian teachings in medieval Europe, human friendship was subordinated
to spiritual friendship. The modern period focused on impartiality and
relegated friendship to the private sphere. Toward the end of the twentieth
century there were renewed discussions about the role of friendship in society
and debates about the ethics and politics of friendship. Different eras have
emphasized different aspects and interpretations of friendship.
Anthropological evidence shows many examples of the role of friendship in
different societies and culture. The Arapesh of northwestern New Guinea, the
Hopi of Arizona, and the Tikopia in the Solomons have ritual or ceremonial
bonds of non-kin friendship, mainly between men. However, the societies of
classical Greece and Rome were the traditions that focused most explicitly on
friendship. In most of the classical philosophical writing on friendship, a
sociological context of male-male friendship is presupposed.
The ancient canon of friendship stressed the interests of the "other self" and
reciprocal consideration, as well as the role of friendship, in contributing to a
good and virtuous life. In the medieval period, this canon was superseded by
the concept of spiritual friendship. The relationship between man and
godhead became prominent amid the rise of Christianity and hieratic
religions. Monks and theologians redefined the concepts of love and
friendship, including God as an essential mediating force between human
friendships.
In most philosophy, poetry and literature, male-female relationships are
discussed in terms of romance, passion, sex and marriage, rather than
friendship. Some of the ancients acknowledged friendships between men
and women but almost exclusively as husband and wife. Courtly love of the
Middle Ages as well as the idealized relationships of the Romantic era
emphasized the unattainable, idealized and exclusive male-female intimacy
rather than equal affectionate friendships. In the 1960s, men and women
were friends fighting political battles as women took part in civil rights and
antiwar movements. However, the sexual revolution focused not on nonsexual
friendships but on carnal relationships.
In discussions about friendship between women, both lesbian and non-lesbian
relationships are included. Women's traditional role has been in the home and
friendship assumed more importance as kinship ties were stretched or broken
as a result of social mobility. In medieval monastic writings, women were often
portrayed as a danger to men and the object of inferior emotions such as
carnal desire. In the nineteenth century, women expressed their romantic
friendships in affectionate letters to each other. At the end of the nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the suffragettes
interspersed their political communication with expression of personal
friendship.
About Friendship Day
The emotions and feelings related to the friendship is difficult to be
deciphered. From ancient times, there has been numerous instances of
friendship that have changed the entire meaning of humanity. The friendship
is one such emotion which is well utilized by the writers and directors into
books, literary works or movies.
Emphasizing on the importance of friendship, the great ancient Greek
Philosopher and scientist exclaimed, "Man is by nature a social animal; an
individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our
notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual.
Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not
to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a
god. "
The virtue of friendship has been appreciated by one and all over the world.
To encourage the global bonding of friendship among people, Friendship is
celebrated among people on different dates. Most of the countries like India
followed the USA date of the occasion which falls on First Sunday of August
every year. The Friendship Day in India is scheduled to be on 5th August for the
year 2018.
https://www.questia.com/library/psychology/relationships-and-the-family/fri
endship
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Friendship
https://www.fnp.com/article/friendship-day
What is the Definition of Friendship?
Victoria Y. Carragayan
Diary T. Reyes
