A dialogue on friendship

Old man: Last time we talked, you spoke about the relationship between openness and vulnerability. Would you like to expand on that a bit?

Young man: Sure. I think what I was trying to say was that to be open, we are inherently opening up a part of us that is perhaps weak, underdeveloped, or incomplete; we are sharing a part of us that can be very easily judged.

Old man: Wouldn’t you say, though, that there are a great many people who are open, perhaps even very vulnerable, yet powerful?

Young man: Absolutely. Artists are a great example. But I don’t think the weaknesses we expose through openness is permanent. If anything, it’s quite fleeting and only temporary.

Old man: A lot of people don’t seem to feel that way, though. A great number of individuals struggle to be open; struggle to get past that feeling of weakness, however short-lived it may be.

Young man: Definitely. It’s not easy to be confident with our emotions. Wielding our emotions reminds me a lot of physical exercise.

Old man: Why is that?

Young man: Well, in the same way that people lack confidence in their physical capacities, people can lack confidence in their emotional capacities. People might fear to go to the gym for fear of judgement from others, or even the judgement they put upon themselves. I think people do that with their emotions as well. It can be a lot easier on the heart and mind to just keep ourselves closed off.

Old man: Well, if that’s the case, our emotional capacity ought to be something we can develop similar to the way we can develop our bodies through exercise.

Young man: Definitely

Old man: So, do you think being vulnerable is important for emotional, or just general personal growth?

Young man: Yes, but…

Old man: But what?

Young man: We cannot be vulnerable if we are alone. Being open, and therefor being vulnerable, is only something we can do by sharing ideas and feelings with other people.

Old man: So it can only happen with other people?

Young man: Right. To be open is to share our feelings with other people. It is not possible to be open without others.

Old man: So it doesn’t quite seem to fit with the idea of our emotions being similar to our body. You can exercise completely alone and still grow stronger. Can you not?

Young man: That’s true. But you gain much more by having an exercise buddy. You learn new skills, you share ideas to make new ones, the extra eyes, heart, and mind help you see things you otherwise might not see.

Old man: Ok. That makes sense. But going back to emotions and feelings, what about art; like painting or music? We can paint alone. We can make music alone. In fact, most painting and most music seems to be done alone. We hear so much about artists holing themselves up in a dingy, dimly lit room, only to come forth with new masterpieces after much solitude.

Young man: Sure, but that’s the point: they come out and share it. We can do things alone. We can feel alone. We can think alone. We can act alone. But there is very little meaning if we do not share art after we finish it.

Old man: And you think the same can be said of our feelings; that there is very much less meaning if we do not share them?

Young man: What do you mean?

Old man: I mean, if we think alone, is that useless? Is there meaning when we think alone?

Young man: It is not useless. But when we share our thoughts and feelings with others, we can get new and deeper ones. It’s very similar to the example before with an exercise buddy; they help us to see and feel things we cannot see and feel on our own.

Old man: So, we find more meaning by sharing? And that lets us grow?

Young man: Right.

Old man: So, would you go as far as to say that we do not find meaning alone?

Young man: Wow…that’s a really tough one.

Old man: So, can you have meaning by yourself?

Young man: To be honest, no, I don’t think so. We can think alone. We can feel alone. But eventually we need to share ourselves with others.

Old man: Is there anything you would like to share; something you haven’t shared yet; something you’ve kept alone?

Young man: Yes.

Old man: Like what?

Young man: Well, it has to do with something a friend of mine said.

Old man: What was it?

Young man: Well, she asked a really good question. She asked, “Should we always be open, even in difficult situations?”

Old man: What was so interesting about that?

Young man: Well, I think the point is that we sometimes we feel we should not be 100% open.

Old man: Why do you think we do that?

Young man: I guess there’s probably two reasons. One, we are worried about judgement; how someone will think about us; how they will react to our thoughts, our feelings, our existence.

Old man: And the other reason?

Young man: I think we are worried that our thoughts and feelings are somehow...

incomplete

Perhaps we really just want to take more time to think alone about them. But perhaps we are expecting too much perfection; a complete wholeness from our thoughts and feelings. And we do this not only to ourselves, but to others as well.

Old man: This talk of feelings makes me think of what you said about art earlier.

Young man: Really? How so?

Old man: Have you ever seen art that looked complete?

Young man: What? Like, totally finished? No. I’m not even sure that the point of art is to be completely finished.

Old man: That’s what I was thinking. The artist is sharing the middle of their thoughts with us. It can be incomplete, but that is because it is capturing their feelings at that exact moment.

Young man: They are not worried about judgement from others or feeling incomplete themselves.

Old man: Right, they are expressing their present; their now.

Young man: There’s something beautiful sharing ourselves in that way.

Old man: That’s certainly one thing that makes art so beautiful.

Young man: But art doesn’t always make us feel good, right? It can make us feel sadness, anger, or other negativity.

Old man: That’s true. And that goes back to your friend’s question of whether we should be open even in difficult situations. Should an artist hide those feelings? Should we expect people to only share happy or complete feelings and thoughts?

Young man: No, definitely not. I don’t think we should expect that.

Old man: What should we do then?

Young man:
We shouldn’t
expect
people to think or feel a certain way. We should
accept
however they come to us.

Old man: Are you saying that we simply agree 100% all the time?

Young man: No, not at all. Someone’s ideas and feelings can be imcomplete and we can even disagree. But even if we disagree, we should not return a friend’s openness with judgement. We should return it with an open heart; an acceptance to listen and understand. And if we disagree, we should return our own openness; our ideas and our feelings shared with our friend.

Old man: A friend?

Young man: Yeah. I know we weren’t talking about friends. But I think anyone who is open in this way can be friends.