Friendships

Recently, the idea of love and what it means to love and be loved and the fairness of it. When I first came home from uni in June I went through a rough patch where I knew some of my friends were also home and wanted to see them but because no one was trying to reach out to me I wasn't doing anything about it. I felt like, if they wanted to see me, they would try to. Deep down I knew the reason was almost definitely because I have always been the organiser, no one else in my friendship group has been the one to suggest meet ups that aren't birthday parties outside of school. That was okay when we saw each other every day and didn't need to try and talk to each other because we could all the time. When we had to actually try, however, it hurt me that no one else reached out and tried to contact me, let alone try and arrange anything to see me or any of my other friends. Eventually I did end up organising something and it was a fun night, I'm glad I did.

A few weeks ago I saw a post on tumblr that was talking about love. One person had said "don't cross oceans for someone who won't cross a puddle for you" and someone else had replying with a few lines basically saying do, love everyone deeply, do things for people, its worth it. I was conflicted about this post. Part of me, the stubborn part which didn't want to arrange anything for my friends without them doing something for me first, agrees with the first person. However, I also see the validity in loving deeply and being exceptionally kind to people, especially the people you love. Its something I still can't form an opinion on because I still see both sides.

I do, however, think that friendship should involve effort from both (or all) parties involved. I value a text or a message first every time, it means a lot to me. This year of being away from my friends I know that I am usually the first one to get in contact with any of my group from sixth form. Thats the way its always been and I know that that probably doesn't lessen the amount that they care about me but there's a difference between knowing and feeling. I know friendships change as people do and that's the natural progression of relationships, I know that not everyone has the same definition or expectations of friendship. That doesn't stop it hurting though when I realise that none of the people who are meant to be my best friends have started a conversation with me for months or I see them having a lot more contact with each other than they do with me.

As with many things I don't have a good conclusion to my thoughts on this, I'm still figuring a lot of things out. What I do know is that I love my friends deeply and always will, even if I'm not always able to call them friends. People mean the most to me and I got really lucky with my group of friends through the last years of high school and sixth form. I don't think I'll ever get that lucky again and I don't know how my friendships are going to be even a year from now. Its scary and I know there's a big chance that I'll never truly have the exact friendships I wanted once upon a time, I just hope that my current friendships can grow in a positive way throughout the years.

Shades of grey

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the concept of morality, right and wrong and all that complicated stuff that makes my head hurt. What I've really struggled with is knowing that everything, including morality, is one big social construction that has most likely been created by other people. I do believe that it is something that is needed though, we need to have generally agreed principles of what is right and wrong in order to function as a society. However, it needs to be something that can change and be moulded with society. Its dangerous when people aren't able to think about multiple sides of things and consider other people's point of view rather than completely disregarding everything someone says because it doesn't match what you think.

Sometimes I feel like people need to realise that people are immensely complex and have the ability to be both great and terrible throughout their lives. No one can ever know exactly what its like to be someone else and so everyone is inherently self-centred. If someone hurts you it is almost impossible to see that person as anything other than bad and deserving of punishment.. On the flip side, if someone you love and respect does something terrible it takes time and a lot of hard work to adjust your view of them and it might never happen.

Life is a lot easier if you have a set framework where you know that certain behaviour is always wrong and another is always okay. That isn't always the case though, everyone has different reasons for their behaviour and no one other than the person can ever truly know the reasons behind it. Therefore, I think it is important to take into account the complexity of behaviour before completely judging it.

I've come to judge things on how much good they put out in the world rather than in absolutism.