And it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.'
- Anais Nin.
Today I had lunch with Gill, my funny, foodie, eccentric friend. No sooner had I written those words than I got to thinking, isn't it funny how we define our friends and how those definitions are relevant to why we choose them.
Naturally, we aren't going to say: 'Today I had lunch with my miserable, jealous, disloyal friend' it would be a contradiction surely? None of us in our right minds want to be friends with negative people. Which led me to wonder how and why we choose our friendships.
Friendship is a baffling subject and one of the least understood areas of psychology concerns the role of friends in our lives.
Scientific studies and research shows that a part of our brain which controls motivation and emotion becomes more active when we meet people 'like us.' the theory is that we naturally befriend people of our own social standing.
When we first bought our apartment in Spain it was rather like starting at a new school. All of the new homeowners were beginning a community life together where communication was a must. Gathered together, we strangers weighed each other up and rather quickly friendships and cliques were formed, but on what basis?
True friendship is a feeling of comfort and emotional safety with a person, however, sometimes we look for people who make up for the deficits we see in ourselves. Often, friends lives seem more interesting and exciting, sometimes a person associates with another person or group for the purpose of gaining some personal advantage or glorification.
The workplace is an obvious environment for making friends, yet it can crackle with competition and work friendships can take on a transactional feel, rarely do these friendships run smoothly.
Jealousy has the power to destroy even the most solid friendships, people who know us best have the capacity to betray us should the relationship turn sour. Jealousy is not always out in the open but rather wrapped under layers of passive aggression and veiled hostility. Some friends find our happiness a constant reminder of their unhappiness, in some cases they want to keep you small so they'll cut you down to size so their world feels 'right' again.
Of course the definition of friendship has changed in today's technologically connected world. In the context of social media, the term friend often describes a 'contact.' For those of us getting older, we realise it becomes less important to have lots of friends and more important to have real, loyal ones. We no longer seek validation, we look for kindness and an ability to tolerate, we seek mutual affection and when we lose friends, we have to change how we see ourselves and our lives. We live in our individual world of meaning and we need to find friends whose individual world is similar to our own.
They say 'friends are the family we choose.' unlike children and adolescents we should not, as adults, be under social pressure by members of our peer groups to adopt certain values or conform to be accepted. We don't have to stay within rigid circles pertaining to our own social standing, politics or ethnicity.
As Albert Einstein said: 'However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.'
They say we appear to be like our closest friends genetically, ie drawn by similar tastes and certain smells. My circle of closest friends certainly share my love of all things food related and Gill is a foodie extraordinaire! Lunch as always was absolutely delicious.
Gill's coleslaw
Recipe
White cabbage
Parsnip
Beetroot
Carrot
Red onion
Apple
Natural yoghurt
Mayonnaise
Lemon
Salt and pepper
Chopped walnuts
Sultanas, soaked in hot water
Peel and shred vegetables and apple into a large bowl
Season and squeeze the juice of 1 lemon over the vegetables
Add a a large dollop of yoghurt and mayonnaise and combine well
Scatter nuts and sultanas on top
Serve immediately
Treasure your friends
Love Donna xxxxxxxx
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