Wellbeing

Friendship

Recently the Counselling Team have encountered a number of students who find making (and keeping) friends difficult. The teenage years provide the pathways for exploring identity, and creating friendships is central to that journey.

The term “making friends” could do with some exploration.

1. Friends don’t appear out of thin air. They are “made”. In other words, they are “created”. This requires something of us, something unique; it comes from inside us. We have to do some work to make a friend, in the same way that a painter has to work to create a painting, or an author to write a novel.

2. Ask: Do I want this person as a friend? If not, the relationship won’t grow. Eventually it will fizzle out. Like a sculpture that remains unfinished because the artist isn’t truly invested.

3. Are you willing to be a little vulnerable, to let the future friend see something real in you? All the great masterpieces were born of some uncertainty that they pushed through. The great philosopher Aristotle likened friendship to “a slow ripening fruit.”

4. Are you prepared to embrace differences and focus on mutual respect and support? If so, future friends will be attracted to you and you will keep those you already have.

    

Finally, be prepared to be the person you’d like a possible friend to be. Show what its like to be a friend.

From the Counselling Team

Wellbeing Team

St Peter's College