Unconditional Friendship...

I just got back from seeing Frankie off at the airport. He's on his way to Switzerland for a year, on International Youth Exchange. Frankie is technically one of my students, but more of a friend. He did learn from me - German, among other things and I got to learn from him.
For all my talk of friends as mirrors, Frankie... is a mirror and a good one... though I'm not sure he's exactly aware of how much of a good friend he has been for me.... but that's OK.
Like I said, you need not smother your friends with pressure - especially the ones which are best for you, by telling them you consider them (one of) your best friend(s)...
To this day, I haven't told any of the three people I consider/ed (at one time or another) my best friends... that I felt this way and I prefer it like this...

This post though... dedicated to Frankie...

With my other best friends - the cases were different. I was myself with them. One accepted me as is, had fair expectations about me, is a lovely fellow himself and is still in touch. It is for this unbiased acceptance from him that makes me very comfortable with him.

The other one - well, we haven't talked in two years - yet when we did... it was all good - a fair amount of trust was bestowed upon me, the acceptance was not quite unconditional but it was still acceptance and an intelligent ear was lent for whatever I had to say and stimulating discussion took place.
This person believes that all relationships have a shelf life and that one should make the best of one, while one can... these are not necessarily views I agree with... in fact... I'd stay in touch with certain special people one way or another.. forever... but as it stands... our relationship expired and while I'm not sure I count this person as a friend anymore... she was one of the best ones I had... for the conversations we had and moreso.. for the thing I learned from the expiry of our interaction...

Frankie... he is new. Like I said... a student... the age difference is pretty big.
Yet... for his occasional childishness and childlike wonder at many things, he has a very good head on his shoulders. Can come off as abrasive but impress him and you're all set.
To his credit, he listened intelligently every time I lectured him on some point or the other, he was frank enough to say when the lectures bored him... yet subsequent interactions proved that he had been paying attention throughout...

The best gift that he gave me was never ever patronising me...

I think you will know that there are times when we act a little petulant with our friends in the hope that they will indulge us and massage our ego at some point... yet this never happened with Frankie... calling a spade a spade, I got a sort of taste of my own medicine and while it was bitter to begin with... the subsequent reflection on it made me learn things about him, about myself and made me grow. This might sound weird but I really appreciated it.. especially when there were no ulterior motives in being blunt... he was not being mean... just matter of fact and now I know how other might feel when I do it. Yet... I can do it now with better understanding and responsibility towards the person I'm being blunt with...

This post talks about him... it made me reflect on the self... and brought about an unconditionality in my behaviour towards him. His straightforwardness has led to a tremendous increase in my affection for him and I have very little doubt that I would do for him, whatever he asked me to do... and also a trust in him that he would not ask me to do anything stupid... not dangerously so anyway...

How many of you have any sort of unconditional friendship or regard for anyone?

It can get trying... as Frankie prepared for his trip there... he got busy... a little inaccessible... times when I wanted to talk to him, he was unavailable... no replies to texts and all...
It's at this time that it can get trying and one starts to think if there is any deliberateness involved in this lack of communication... yet... whenever we met, talked after any of this... the signs were clear that none of it was deliberate.

Patience, regard, trust, thankfulness, maturity(?)... are among the few things I believe I have learned from him... due to him... in one form or another... for one situation or another...

You need not take my word for it, you need not even believe me... but perhaps my actions and interactions with you might prove the point... or perhaps there's no point to be proven at all. I am blessed for having known this boy. He is neither special, nor amazing, nor awe inspiring... he is a mirror and thus... all of the above...

Over the last few months as I mulled and reflected on these thoughts, the following questions occurred to me:

do you think it's possible (and healthy) to be an unconditional friend?
to do whatever your friend asks you
even though they might not care for you as much
or for them you're a buddy who has uses and is good at some things
while not part of the mainstream friend circle?

It would be good if the readers could get back to me with their thoughts.
In comments if you like, by email if you prefer... with your permission, I might share this feedback.

I actually sent these questions to CoCo and his response is pasted below:

"In response to your question about friendship. This is interesting because, in a lot of ways, JDM has been that kind of friend for me. And we actually had a massive argument about it at one point, how he is always there for me but it is not necessarily reciprocated. JDM will drop what he's doing and help me if I'm in trouble. He'll drive to my place to go for a walk with me and will ditch work and the people he's with. He'll stop what he's doing if I need to talk to him. He's done tons for me. He's also not in my mainstream circle of high school friends. Throughout all of high school JDM was this mythical figure to all my friends that I talked about a lot and hung out with a lot but no one ever saw. People began to joke that he was just my invisible friend and he didn't actually exist.

The thing with JDM though is that he doesn't have "his uses" as you put it...that makes it sound like I'm using him, which I'm not...I just enjoy talking to him and we have a lot in common and play music and do all these other things.
Now putting all that aside, to actually answer your question: is it healthy to be an unconditional friend? all I can say is to be a LITERALLY unconditional friend is unhealthy. There has to be a line somewhere. I think sometimes JDM has stepped over that line (driving to my place and leaving work was probably the most ridiculous), but I probably have somewhere along the way too. But generally you have to say no sometimes and live your own life and make the friend work on things themselves at some point. You can't constantly be coming to your friend's aid at every beck and call.
A) you need to have your own life and it should hold a high enough degree of importance that at some point your life takes greater importance over the life of your friend,
B) you need to let your friend have his own life and deal with his own stuff without having your shoulder to cry on all the time and
C) you both need to think for yourselves and be separate and distinct people, not living this weird melded life.

"to do whatever your friend asks you even though they might not care for you as much". First of all you can't do whatever your friend asks you all the time...i mean, JDM tells me to do heroin, um..no i think I'm going to think for myself in that situation, there is always an exception. And if your friend is telling you to do heroin in the first place he probably doesn't care about you as much as you care about him and he probably cares about himself even less if he's doing heroin. also as a little side note: I don't like the ambiguity of the idea of how much someone cares about another. I mean, how do you define who cares about who more? its just like trying to decide which spouse loves which more? It's impossible because both the ideas of caring and loving are very ambiguous and person-specific."

This was pretty educational for me... I never expected a response from the recipient of such unconditional friendship. And a lot of it makes sense...

So write in, tell me what YOU think...

In conclusion, I'd also like to share what my mum told me a couple weeks ago. I have an aunt who's extremely fond of me... she's a cousin aunt... so in some ways this is strange... yet we have similar interests, love to chatter and get along like a house on fire whenever we meet. She has also been keeping an eye out for things that would be helpful for me in my career (she's a psychologist as well) and is generally a very nice person.
When I got my visa, my mum asked me if I had told her yet and I hadn't... so she was a little irriated at me and gave me something to reflect upon.

"जे आपल्यावर निरपेक्षितपणे प्रेम करतात, त्यांची जरा दखल जास्त द्यावी!"

It's not quite verbatim but she said that for people who love us unconditionally and without expectation of anything in return, should be especially taken care of, from our side... albeit in whatever small way...
In fact, I'd add... निरपेक्षित प्रेम जे आपल्यावर करतात, त्यांच्यासाठी अधुनमधुन काही अनपेक्षित आणि थोड्याश्या अलग गोष्टी करायला हव्यात! अशी अपेक्षा आपण स्वतःकडून ठेवावी!
For people who love us unconditionally, we should expect ourselves to do the unexpected for them, from time to time!