Alternate:Words

Friend­ship, orig­i­nally uploaded by Thorsten Becker.

From Wikipedia:

The term sym­bio­sis (from the Greek: σύν syn “with”; and βίωσις bio­sis “liv­ing”) com­monly describes close and often long-term inter­ac­tions between dif­fer­ent bio­log­i­cal species. The term was first used in 1879 by the Ger­man mycol­o­gist, Hein­rich Anton de Bary, who defined it as: “the liv­ing together of unlike organ­isms”.
The def­i­n­i­tion of sym­bio­sis is in flux and the term has been applied to a wide range of bio­log­i­cal inter­ac­tions. The sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship may be cat­e­go­rized as being mutu­al­is­tic, par­a­sitic, or com­men­sal in nature. Oth­ers define it more nar­rowly, as only those rela­tion­ships from which both organ­isms ben­e­fit, in which case it would be syn­ony­mous with mutualism.

Romans 15:1–2: We, though, who are strong ought to bear the weak­nesses of those not strong, and not to be pleas­ing our­selves. 2 Let each of us please [his] neigh­bor in what is good for [his] upbuild­ing.

Friend­ship. Friend­ship seems to be an endan­gered virtue. It is inter­est­ing that in a time and age when mil­lions of peo­ple con­nect online through social net­work­ing sites and are freely using the term ‘friend’ more and more peo­ple are lack­ing true friend­ships. It seems many nowa­days hide behind masks, either for fear of rejec­tion or by inten­tion­ally play­ing roles to attract atten­tion, often moti­vated by deep rooted lone­li­ness. I count myself for­tu­nate to have a few good friends these days. I barely com­mu­ni­cate with them online but rather face to face or at least over the phone. I feel good know­ing that they know me through mutual expe­ri­ences and per­sonal inter­ac­tion rather than through word of mouth as would be the case with pure online rela­tion­ships. I am happy that I can help and upbuild my friends should they go through tough times; I enjoy hav­ing deep and mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions and see­ing them encour­aged to press on and make progress. For the most part I count myself to the ‘strong’ men­tioned in Romans. I get a real sense of pur­pose shar­ing this strength while also know­ing that at times when mine is wan­ing I can count on my friends.

When I think of strength I often pic­ture trees. There are many strong trees in a for­est that not only offer shel­ter but also the means for other plants to lit­er­ally reach for the light, as if lend­ing a help­ing hand. Ivy, as pic­tured, has been used as a sym­bol of friend­ship and loy­alty as well as eter­nity for cen­turies. When I saw this tree stand­ing tall with ivy grow­ing all around it I was reminded of the need to be self­less and offer sup­port. We unde­ni­ably live in a self­ish world where many peo­ple think fore­most about them­selves and their own ben­e­fit. This think­ing is bear­ing its ugly fruits more than ever. Much of the world’s finan­cial trou­ble can be attrib­uted sim­ply to self­ish­ness, not just at the cor­po­rate level but also the per­sonal level. How much anx­i­ety and des­per­a­tion could be avoided if more peo­ple would learn to be self­less, help just to help, not for per­sonal gain or the desire for admi­ra­tion but sim­ply because they want to, sim­ply because their hearts moti­vate them to, sim­ply because they feel oblig­ated to the well-being of their neighbors.

Admit­tedly it is not always easy to be self­less, even if we want to be. Many in need can act self­ish them­selves either by tak­ing undue advan­tage or by not set­ting lim­its when it comes to receiv­ing aid; there is often a sense of enti­tle­ment. These sort of “friend­ships” could be com­pared to ivy that chokes a tree, usu­ally to the point of killing it. It has to be a mutual rela­tion­ship on both sides. We need friends, we need to pick them wisely and then we need to be self­less on the giv­ing as well as the receiv­ing side so that we all may grow in har­mony together. Friend­ship should be a mutual symbiosis.

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