{"id":7416,"date":"2016-04-03T20:55:46","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T00:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/?p=7416"},"modified":"2016-04-03T20:55:46","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T00:55:46","slug":"the-reality-of-friendships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/2016\/04\/03\/the-reality-of-friendships\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reality of Friendships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every now and then, I reflect on my life and all of the people I\u2019ve crossed paths with. I\u2019ve realized that not a lot of people have stayed in my life, and I haven\u2019t really made any lasting friendships. The people I stay connected with vary every year (maybe even after a few months), and it\u2019s a thought that really saddens me. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To get started, below is how I categorize all the people I encounter in my life. This is only a generalization, I don\u2019t necessarily think about what to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">label<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> people under. I also refer to this as a friendship portfolio.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b><b>Best Friends:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> People you\u2019ve known for a long time, trust completely, and can talk to about anything.<\/span><\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Close Friends:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The main distinction between close friends and best friends is the amount of time you\u2019ve known the person. Close friends are people you haven\u2019t known for that long, but you talk to them everyday and trust them with everything.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Friends: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">People you see around often and are friendly with whenever you see them, but you\u2019re not particularly close to them.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Acquaintances: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">When you hear the word acquaintance, the first thing that pops into your head is probably Facebook friend. The next thing that pops into your head is people you know of, but who never talk to you. And that\u2019s exactly what acquaintances are. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>The Sea of Unreliability: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This phrase is coined by my best friend. \u201cThe sea\u201d refers to people you can\u2019t depend on at all, people who only talk to you when they need help with homework, and people who show up to your hangouts half an hour late or who always cancel last minute. You get the general idea.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course, the biggest \u201ccategories\u201d are acquaintances and possibly the sea of unreliability. It\u2019s much more difficult to make best friends and close friends. You don\u2019t just meet someone and ask, \u201ccan you be my best friend?\u201d It simply doesn\u2019t work that way; forming lasting bonds with people takes a lot of time and effort. Unfortunately, it\u2019s even harder to keep in touch with best friends or close friends if you don\u2019t see them everyday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">One common problem I\u2019ve helped a lot of my friends with are problems involving their friends: they haven\u2019t talked to a friend in a long time, a friend changed too much and they don\u2019t know if they should continue talking to the friend, etc. I approach these problems by asking my friends what they want in the end, meaning whether they want to stay connected to the person, or not. The next thing I tell them to do is to evaluate their friendship portfolio. This means understanding who your best friends, close friends, friends, and acquaintances are, and who falls in the sea of unreliability.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The first step to creating a friendship portfolio is becoming aware that these \u201ccategories\u201d exist. I hate to break it to you, but if you don\u2019t acknowledge that the sea of unreliability exists, then you\u2019re either too nice, oblivious, or you\u2019re part of the sea.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Maybe this will make you reconsider all of your friendships. Or maybe it won\u2019t. I\u2019ll let you decide.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Featured Image: Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every now and then, I reflect on my life and all of the people I\u2019ve crossed paths with. I\u2019ve realized that not a lot of people have stayed in my life, and I haven\u2019t really made any lasting friendships. The people I stay connected with vary every year (maybe even after a few months), and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":7417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[849,850,851,1596,1841,2330],"class_list":["post-7416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-friends","tag-friendship-portfolio","tag-friendships","tag-opinions","tag-relationships","tag-unreliability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}