[Agape] Loving Your Friends

I’ll be there for you . . . Sing along with me, “. . . when the rain starts to pour. I’ll be there for you, like I’ve been there before. I’ll be there for you, ‘cause you’re there for me too.”Television and film are full of homages paid to timeless friendships: Friends, Steel Magnolias, Grease, The Breakfast Club, The Office, How I Met Your Mother, and Harry Potter, to name a few. In fact, films and television spanning all genres dedicate at least a part of their plots to telling the story of a timeless and impactful friendship. There are even personality quizzes dedicated to calculating your persona in a famous film or television friend group. Today, pop culture has centered on this idea of friendship: “Who is in your squad?” “#squadgoals” “#friendshipgoals”. For example, the media constantly relays news on Taylor Swift’s squad and new up-and-coming clicks that may dethrone the queen, like the newly formed squad including Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Schumer, Aziz Ansari and Chris Pratt. But, how has this portrayal of friendship affected our lives? Do our friendships in reality reflect the perfect image of friendship in film, television, literature, and, now, the media? So, in a world that dictates to us the ingredients of a perfect “squad,” how do we truly love our friends?First, we start by being authentic. In many ways the Self Series is applicable to this series. How we have learned to love ourselves, respect ourselves, challenge ourselves, grow ourselves, and believe in ourselves carries not just through our own independent lives, but it carries through our relationships with others. Once you have learned to love yourself and see yourself for who you truly are and everything you aspire to be, once you grow content with who you are, you are more capable of offering yourself in your entirety to those around you. With each step you take in loving yourself, you are more capable of stepping in to authenticity and vulnerability in your relationships with others. When you begin to open up in your friendships and when you begin to show others your genuine person and character, you invite others to do the same. So, in being genuinely and authentically you, you foster a relationship that is pure and true in nature. You, then, begin to love your friends well by being yourself, expressing yourself and by authentically communicating your thoughts, opinions, and feelings because in doing so, you invite your friends to do the same.After we grow in authenticity in our relationships, we continue loving our friends by being intentional. We live in an age where action goes the extra mile. Commitment is a dying quality in our generation and shifting commitment from an esteemed value to a preferred trait has impacted the way we perceive and operate friendships. So, we find ourselves making a handful of coffee dates only to follow through with one or two of them. We find it much easier to cancel plans over a text because we are “too busy,” or because “something else came up.” Believe me, I am no stranger to this, myself. I have even, at times, found myself relieved when someone else has canceled previous plans we had made because it has let me off the hook. But, we need to realign ourselves and move back into the era of intention. We need to start being intentional and self-motivated in making our friendships work. We need to put effort into making our friendships the most rewarding and healthy relationships in our lives, for how we treat our friends sets the precedent for how we treat all other people we may come into contact with. If we allow our friendships to suffer, if we neglect the prosperity of our friends, then we have little excuse to see the world prosper around us. Our determination, our intention, and our authenticity in the way we relate to and treat our friends build a foundation for how we treat even acquaintances and strangers in our lives.The next thing that follows being intentional, then, is being there. Be there for the small things, the big things, the celebrations, and the tears. It may not always be feasible or practical to be physically there for your friends, but being emotionally, supportively, and willingly there for your friends surpasses any physical bounds or limitations. So then, part of being there is knowing what is going on in your friends’ lives. You cannot possibly be supportive or empathetic if you do not know what challenges they face, what thrills them, what scares them, or what makes them happy. In this way, being intentional carries on to being there for your friends. When it is so easy for us to cancel plans over text or instant messaging, it should be substantially easier to be there for our friends over text message, Skype, FaceTime, or even a phone call.So, we need to start being authentic, being intentional, and being there for our friends in order to become better relational people. When we begin investing in our friendships and when we begin empowering, challenging, and inspiring our friends, we begin to have an impact that stretches farther than just our close friends. In pursuing healthy friendships, we empower ourselves to pursue those same relationships with those around the world and we collectively begin to build a global community that is based on authentic, intentional, and reliable relations with one another.