The
following are excerpts from Teen
Love on Friendship.
Nothing
Wrong with Being Me: If my friends are only
comfortable with the one side of me that I
consistently show them, then maybe they don't really
know the whole me. It is my job to be strong enough
and secure enough to show them that I am different
people at different times.
What's wrong
with being unpredictable? Whether it's a desire to be
quiet or a need to express a deeply felt opinion or
perspective about the world, I have to work to give
myself the freedom to be me. Even if I don't always
know exactly who that person is. Even if others may
not like or accept the new "me." My
greatest responsibilty is to myself and to my
personal growth.
Express
Our True Selves: We are complex beings. Why
not acknowledge it? Why not celebrate it? Why not
have the courage to show it? We all lose out when we
try to whittle ourselves down to the expectations of
otheres. The best thing to do is just relax and
express our true selves in whatever way seems right
at the moment. As long as we're not hurting others,
or ourselves, we should be able to show all sides of
our personalities.
Put
Your Needs First:
Putting your needs first means being true to yourself
and surrounding yourself with people who will also be
true to you. Putting your needs first means accepting
only appropriate behavior from others and allowing
only respectful and caring people into your life.
Putting your needs first means understanding that you
deserve to be happy, no matter who you are, what you
look like, how smart you are, how much money you have
or what kind of clothes you wear. And you can only be
happy when you pay attention to your deepest feelings
and you make a decision to honor your needs.
No
Guarantees: I learned the hard way that I
cannot always count on others to respect my feelings,
even if I respect theirs. Being a good person doesn't
guarantee that others will be good people, too. You
only have control over yourself and how you choose to
be as a person. As for others, you can only choose to
accept them or walk away.
Take
Care of Yourself: To answer the question of
how well you're loving yourself, ask yourself the
following question: Do you spend a lot of time
focusing on other people's problems? It's much easeir
to focus on the problems of others than to deal with
our own flaws. Maybe we look at other people's
problems because we are truly concerned with their
well-being. Or maybe we do it because we feel
responsible for other people-more responsible, even,
than we feel for ourselves. If you develop a good,
caring, honest relationship with yourself, you will
be able to help others when they need it. When you
take good care of yourself and your emotional life,
you allow others to see you as a model of self-love.
You automatically pass it around. If you want to have
a positive influence on your friends or family, do it
by setting an example through your own behavior.
Stand
Up for What You Believe In: Ultimately we
earn people's respect when we stand up for what we
believe in. Being yourself, regardless of the social
context, epitomizes strenght. Strangely enough, even
the people who might feel offended by you "being
yourself" will ultimately respect you more than
they will people who just agree with them out of fear.
The
Shelter of Friendship: It takes a lot for
people to push their insecurities aside and allow
others to look right into their souls. But the reward
for being vulnerable is that deep sense of belonging
that only a true fiendship can give. My mother once
told me about a saying in Spanish that describes
friendship: "Mis amigos son las personas con las
que me entiendo." Translated it means:
Friendship is a place where I can understand myself
with someone else."
We need our
friends to help us understand and love ourselves. It
also means that friendships should be safe places
where our deepets secrets and our most painful
weaknesses can find shelter and will never be used
against us. I am lucky because I have friendships
like this.
Friendships
Are a Journey: Friends are there to defend
us, to support us and to challenge us. I value my
friends because they have stuck up for me when others
have tried to hurt me, and they have bolstered my
self-esteem when I was feeling insecure. I especially
love my friends because they hold a mirror up to me
and make me look at parts of myself that I sometimes
don't want to face. That's what a real friend does:
helps you see who you are and maybe even helps you to
change and become a better person. This kind of
intimacy is hard to acheive. It takes a lot of
honesty and willingness from both people, and a lot
of trust. The quality of a friendship depends
entirely on the quality of commitment and the quality
of love that two friends develop over a lifetime.
Friendships, like life, are a journey, sometimes you
struggle for, something that keeps changing and
growing, and something that unfolds and takes shape
as you live it.
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