Lately I’ve had reason to ponder what it means to be a friend. Specifically, whether it’s ever appropriate to share something that might cause a friend to feel you are not being supportive. What if the unsupportive thing might ultimately help the friend, even if it hurts your status as a friend? Like the U2 song lyric, if “you’re stuck in a moment and you can’t get out of it,” should your friend to try to shake you loose or simply stand by your side and keep you company? Can a person hear what they’re not ready to hear? Should a friend not bother trying? Does true friendship mean a willingness to risk the friendship to save the friend?
A much lighter quandary: If ice cream wreaks havoc on my sinuses, why do I insisted on eating every night?
I have often pondered this myself and have decided that it really depends on the friend and their self-esteem. I like when people are honest with me. I can appreciate a friend’s advice… I also hope they understand when I decide against taking it. Everyone has to make their own decision because they ultimately have to live with it. If you believe your friend does not have the capacity to hear the truth, sometimes you can ask questions to try to get your point across. Manipulative? Maybe… but sometimes people have to come to the realization themselves.
Thanks for sharing, Kara. Within the last week I’ve tried the two different approaches — staying quiet and speaking up — with two different friends. Ultimately both worked out with the friendship in tact and the friend feeling better, but the speaking up tactic involved much emotionally exhausting communication between us to get to the good place. I’m glad we got there. I also realized an important lesson: there is no single Truth to hear. There’s your truth and my truth and if we are very lucky we are able to come to understand each other’s.