by JH 16 Replies latest jw friends
Good friends are quite rare. They say that you can count the number of good friends you have on the fingers of one hand.
I was just wondering, do you have more "good friends" or enemies? or if you rather, do you have more ordinary friends or people that just don't like you?
In my case I would say I hardly have any friends, no enemies, and not too many who hate me.
How about you?
As a Jehovah's Witness it's certainly difficult to make good friends as submission to God and the Organisation comes before anything else in your life. Most congregations seem to be a hotbed of gossip and backstabbing as everyone vies for position in the pecking order. This kind of climate doesn't encourage you to trust anyone in the congregation as your friend and confidante.
Most of the friends I have now are the ones I've made here, I've resigned myself to losing all the ones I made that are still in the org.
As far as enemies are concerned you need to differentiate between people you don't like and people who don't like you. I don't know if anyone really hates my guts, but the idea of being disliked by anyone unsettles me greatly. If someone said that they hated me I would try my very best to find out the reason and try to patch things up with them. Some people have a very laissez faire attitude to such things but I don't. I make a point of being civil and courteous to everyone and so if people don't like me then I would hope that it was not for want of me trying to patch things up. Hatred is a very negative emotion that eats you up and will eventually destroy you.
You have the right attitude Matty. I also hate having enemies, and would want to fix what's wrong if ever I had one.
Speaking to people with an attitude like yours is pleasant.
I try hard not to make enemies.
I'm sure some people are blistfully unaware that I am holding the sword of Damocleas above their head, just waiting for that right time ...
Wise man once said, keep your friends close, but thy enemies closer.
In the past, I can count 4 old bosses of mine that I can call enemies, yet I think the hate is only one way.
Five "true-to-the-core;-till- death-do-us-part" friends. Everyone else falls under the nebulous category of background noise and/or window dressing.
When my dad's body was found, the police chaplain told me that this event would show us who our true friends were. He was very right. I was VERY surprised. A couple who have been our "best friends" for over 20 years basically showed that being JW was more important than doing the right thing. A friend's husband who had all but disappeared from our lives turned into The Rock and made the whole weekend a lot easier. A family who professed to be SOOO fond of my parents walked out when they found out the service was going to start with "Amazing Grace" and they've been dragging my name through the mud ever since.
I think I have more friends than enemies. I have several very, very good friends to whom I would entrust my life. Most of them are no longer Jehovah's Witnesses.
Nina
If someone has a problem with me or hates me, then it is their responsibility
to let me know what's up. And we can go from there. Otherwise, it's their
problem if they want to carry around their dislike for me. ( I am through with
worrying about who likes me or who doesn't like me.)
If their dislike for me moves them to commit actions that harm me or mine,
then they have made themself my enemy. And we can go from there.
Being nice and courteous isn't going to stop someone from becoming your enemy
If they have already made their mind up to be your enemy.
My enemy would torture and kill me if he thought he could get away from it. And he
didn't become my enemy because I wasn't nice. He became my enemy because I
was "nice". Perhaps I should give him a ring and try to patch things up? LoL.
Well, this has changed since no longer being active as a witness.
I would say now, that I have many friends, and really no enemies that I can think of. Of course there have been people over time that we have not gotten along, but I don't know how long one should hold a grudge.
I tend to leave disagreements to the past, and concentrate on today and tomorrow.
A good friend is so hard to come by. I do think we all have more than we realize. I can count on one hand how many "best friends" I've ever had. But I think sometimes people don't realize how many people are affected by their presence. I know I've been guilty of that. Several years ago, I had a really terrible couple of days where everything seemed to crumble around me. I broke up with the man I was dating, got laid off from my job, and found out I needed major lung surgery all within a matter of 10 days. I was BLOWN AWAY with how many people came out of the woodwork to support me - through prayers, gifts, visits, cards, flowers. When I came out of surgery, I had more visitors at the hospital than the nurses knew what to do with. I still have BOXES of the cards and dried flowers that I received. It was a welcome and overwhelming surprise! It really helped me since I was in the midst of a terrible depression. I consider some of you here friends and I've never even met you!
