Close Friends in the context of self-growth

Close friends, something that most us social beings have unless you’re an extremist stoic. An aspect of stoicism is not letting outside influences affect your personal growth. So any object-may be sentient or insentient, that can influence your decisions, thinking process, daily routine and so on-in a way that negates your own original thinking should be identified. What you want to do after the identification depends on your goals. Some teachings of the Stoics are evident in my own life because I remind myself of the necessity of following them. But in all capacities, this world is now connected and it’s far easier to be connected and influenced than not. You might’ve already guessed. Close-friends are one of many things that evoke this ‘outside influence’ I’m talking about. But do they really negate our original thinking? Bear in mind, this ‘original thinking’ encapsulates the things I’ve mentioned before and more(Decisions, thinking process, daily routine and so on).

We tend to confuse a ‘best friend’ with ‘close friend(s)’. Close friends are the ones who you spend the most amount of time with. But they’re not necessarily your ‘Best Friend’. Take, for example, C 137 Rick and Morty. If you asked Morty if Rick’s his best friend, I admit, he’d probably say yes. I mean, it’s the only person he ever hangs out with. But Morty just saying that Rick’s his best friend doesn’t in fact, make him his best friend. A best friend is the one you value the most. That could be one of your close friends. Think of it like this- Not all close friends are your ‘Best friend’, but your best friend might be and probably is one of your ‘Close Friends’. For best friends, something needs to happen for the value to rise up. Let’s go back to Rick and Morty now. What does Rick ever do for Morty that could benefit him(Morty, I mean; Rick’s always benefited)?. If Morty looks at his relationship with Rick objectively, he would be able to see that the least that Rick could do is help him grow, intellectually. And here’s Rick, always implying that Morty is a dimwit, incapable of higher intellectual prowess. But this doesn’t really mean Rick can’t be Morty’s best friend. It’s up to Morty to decide if he values Rick the most or not. But one thing’s for sure. Rick Sanchez is Morty’s ‘close’ or rather, closest friend. I’ll leave you with this clip to think about what kind of friend Rick really is to Morty.

Imagine making plans with your ‘Close’ friends. You’re going on a trip. They’ve been tallying up the number of friends going. When they ask you whether you’re going or not, you say maybe. If you’re lucky, none of your friends is incessant. But most of the time, we’re not lucky. And at least one friend insists on you going with them. Now let’s talk about you with respect to your friends. The more you value your friends, the more you value their time and their words. And so, the more incessant they are, you’re either more swayed to ‘Yes, I’ll go’ or more annoyed at them(Depending on what kind of person you are and how you value your close friends). Let’s say you’re not a douche and not annoyed at their insistence. So on the 2nd or 3rd insistence, you start thinking that your presence on the trip will make their time in the trip a bit better; make them a bit happier. Now, let’s put another dimension into the scenario. You have work to complete. The work could be of any form. It could be Academic, fitness or the little productivity things we ‘Self-growth enthusiasts’ like to do. And if you don’t go on the trip with your friends, you’ll have ample time to finish your work. But when one of your friends starts insisting, your mind starts inclining more towards that ‘Your presence will make your friends happier’ thought. I’m not saying that we’ll never be able to say ‘No’. But bear in mind, we’re not completely impervious to it. So what does this mean for us ‘Self-growth enthusiasts’ and how do we go about this kind of scenario? I’ll come back to this but before that, let’s talk about something more important. The relationship between knowledge, dark humour and our thoughts.

If you’re not that into pop-culture and social-media(Like me), here’s a little intro to ‘Dark Humour’. Scientifically, it doesn’t have a definition YET(But if you do find one, do me a favour and comment it down below). What it does have, or rather, involve, is perception. It lies between the lines of funny and grotesquely morbid. One user from the urban dictionary defines dark humour like this: “A form of humour involving a twist or joke making the joke seen as offensive, harsh, horrid. Yet the joke is still funny. In a way, it could be seen as the jokes are so horrible in their twist that it makes it funny.” You can read about the ‘line’ between funny and grotesquely morbid here. Now that you know what it is, let’s see how it affects us in our self-growth endeavour. Oh and here’s one little Dark humour meme for you.

We build bonds with our friends and strengthen them. One of the conventional ways to form and strengthen the bonds is to be funny. Maybe this works because we associate being funny with being a child. And in turn, maybe this works because acting childish entails innocence. But then we have dark humour. Many a time, in our conversations, dark humour seeps in and blurs the line between funny and grotesquely morbid. When it’s a close friend and not an acquaintance, it’s even easier for it to seep in. Of course, it depends on your close friends’ personalities, but even with that dependency, it is easier for it to seep in. And any self-growth enthusiast would be wary of the line. But the fact is, whether a dark humour joke is funny or morbid is completely subjective and individualistic and so we don’t completely know where the line really is. And we don’t know whether us being funny about such sensitive topics(Well, some are less sensitive than others) will affect our thinking in a negative way. As Joseph Andrus once said,

“Be careful what you think. What you think will soon become your words. The words you say will soon become your actions.”

Sure, not every one of your actions is a consequence of your words or thoughts. But isn’t it better to think ‘What steps could we take so that the holocaust never happens again?’ rather than making memes about the holocaust?

Let’s move past whether having dark humour in our conversations is healthy or not. Another thing that it does is that it pulls a curtain over the things that really matter about your close friends. We forget that every one of our friends has core beliefs, principles and knowledge. That all these people have something we can learn from. Whether it be about themselves or about their perceptions of the outside world. And again, it depends on your close friends’ personality but statistically, while we’re trying to strengthen our bonds with them, having conversations and hanging out with them, it’s far easier to forget all that. Imagine one of these close friends as a ‘Distant’ friend, one with whom you have fewer interactions with(Let’s say, in the course of a year). You’re more likely to talk about where you are in life and what your goals are. And at the end of the conversation, you’d wish em well and say goodbye. Throughout the conversation, there’s more knowing about the person and less scope for things from which you gain nothing, intellectually speaking. Jordan Peterson says about ‘Friends’ in his book “12 Rules for Life”,

“What is your friend: the things you know, or the things you don’t know. First of all, there are a lot more things you don’t know. And second, the things you don’t know is the birthplace of all your new knowledge!”

I said I’d come back to what the trip scenario means for ‘Self-growth enthusiasts’. With all the things I’ve mentioned; stoicism, value, knowledge, bonding and our thoughts, it’s up to you to figure out how you want to go about dealing with the scenario. But the one constant for anyone is one of these two questions: “Why would you go?” and “What do you want out of the trip?” Although these two questions are not confined to this scenario only. They should be applied in every aspect of life.

So,

1. Would it be wrong to compromise work for leisure(The trip I talked about)?

Answer: That depends on whether you need leisure, whether you can finish your work after leisure and one or both of the questions I mentioned before.

2. Should we not have close-friends at all?

Answer: Of course we should. But it’s important to remember that close-friends don’t always play a big role in your self-growth. And besides, if you’re happy around them, there’s no bigger reason to have or not have them.

3. Is Dark Humour bad?

Answer: It depends on the context. A good piece of advice from Akash Peshin is that not every sensitive issue can or should be joked about; the line separating good and ugly is pretty thin, and one should only tell them if they’re really good.