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Two questions.
1- What are the 'ideals,' or what have you, for friends?
Like, their qualities- the wholesome and the unwholesome ones- how to decide if you have that type of friend, and how to navigate from an unwholesome one(s), etc.
2. What is the proper response to someone who's insulting someone, to you, or they're insulting you, for fun or out of malice, and to people who get quite angry at a coca cola of theirs being taken, or something small, or big.
Thanks !
mh
Like, their qualities- the wholesome and the unwholesome ones- how to decide if you have that type of friend, and how to navigate from an unwholesome one(s), etc.
2. What is the proper response to someone who's insulting someone, to you, or they're insulting you, for fun or out of malice, and to people who get quite angry at a coca cola of theirs being taken, or something small, or big.
Thanks !
mh
0
Comments
If they get angry tell them your sorry about the coke and you owe them one.
Depends how insulting. People play games. You have your boundaries. You can play too and insult them back (evil grin). Those games aren't that healthy but friends are friends and there can still be tight.
Picking at and poking isn't so bad, but if it's all you hear, I think it would be best to move on.
The times others have made me feel bad, after a lot of denial and fighting, were some of the biggest lessons about myself I have had. It taught me to develop self-esteem. With good self-esteem everything else falls into place. You don't have to think who you like or you don't or what you say and what you do not say. It becomes organically dynamic.
True friends always have very apparent underlying goodness in there somewhere. People will flock to you if you are confident in yourself. And to be confident in yourself in need to detach from the judgement of people who only cause you grief. Don't engage with those people too much. But after a while even that.......you get to see even if they judge you, it doesn't affect you as much...until it doesn't affect you at all....and you just begin to get bored, because the "friendship" isn't really doing anything for you. So you look for better people. And it gets easier to spot them too with self-esteem.
Not trying to say you have low self-esteem...but sometimes it's good to question deeply how we really feel about ourselves.
as far as insults, if they're insulting you or insulting others always respond kindly and wisely dependent upon the situation. one thing i've learned is that you're the only person you can be certain of changing, and when you do genuinely change yourself (it's a process lol) the people around you sense this and automatically feed off your positive vibes and begin to build wholesome qualities within themselves too! it's pretty cool
Honestly? Focus more on how to be a friend than trying to figure out who measures up to an unrealistic standard of being accepted by you as a good friend. Rich, poor, black, white or other, male or female, we are all collectively screwed up and just faking our way through life pretending to have it all figured out. Nobody really meets any objective criteria for 'good friend' including ourselves.
Learning how to be a friend is probably more important than learning how to identify a friend.
Forget about it, we are all too screwed up. One's life partner can die and the person is left wallowing in the depths of despair. They then become sexually aroused and masturbate and have all sorts of perverse fantasies. Pretty screwed up right? Not really. Their capacity to experience pain is simply so overloaded that their brain is funneling stuff to less overwhelmed faculties and so all sorts of emotions that are seemingly inappropriate are occurring. This is called being human. If we are to have any friends at all we will have to forge these relationships with humans. The more put together a person appears, the thicker their veneer is.
Tolerance. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says 'Today I am going to be the biggest asshat possible to everyone I meet.' Instead we all just do the best we can and while trying to do the best we can we make pretty huge mistakes. Embarrassingly huge mistakes. If you can't forgive others for their horrific and embarrassing blunders how will you ever forgive yourself for yours? How will you ever rest in the forgiveness others show toward you if you can't forgive others for their deficiencies?
First recognize how deeply and profoundly undeserving you are of any friendship or affection. Then be deeply grateful for any friendship or affection you receive and lastly, give back, not to those everyone loves, but to those nobody loves.
That is pretty much what I could see happening.
I still go to school, so even if there are people who I am not 'friends' with, I'm still around others who do the judgement and have to be superior or what not. But I did have one friend who I felt conformed to others depending on who he was around, I feel a lot of folks are like that. But he would take their ideas and agree and say the same thing, but when no one else was there, he'd have different ones. Which is why I think opinions aren't a big deal because no one is really right, and they're always different.....
Thanks! That's what I do, or just say nothing so they can... reflect, if that's what you want to say. I've been the 'listener' lately, so I can just observe others and what they say. It's weird how you can notice things about folks.
Everyone should have something genuinely good to them, shouldn't they? If everyone had something- friends, family, etc- that would actually be there, then it could be easier to cope with the process, though it is true that no one can change you for you. But they could help try and steer you out of your hole of despair. And if someone had a positive influence, everywhere, all the time, the world wouldn't be how it is. But that'd be ludacris. It's a choice to be easier 'good' or 'bad,' and people should be given it, even if they're unbelievable confused and these unwholesome actions are the offspring of said confusion and despair, greed, hate, or what have you.
But it's true- people have the little things that tick them off, or just get annoyed easily for some reason. Bear with it? Sure, I suppose. If they want help, you could try. But that's with most things, try to help, but you can only change yourself.
2. That is where skillful means comes in... In following Bodhicitta you have to keep compassion at heart in these situations. What use is there in being riled by someone's desire to cause you harm? People are going to act as they will act, there's nothing you can do to evade that. The only thing you can do is change your personal reaction to such things. Once you've done that, If I was in a situation where a friend of mine was being ridiculed I'd simply do something to taunt their aggressions toward myself instead.
This is true, and I haven't much problem with anyone ridiculing me, but how coud I negate what they say about someone else, to me?