Fair

20
Written by Catherin J Pascal Dunk

I’m not a friend
to rely on

but I’ll show up—
sometimes.

I’m not a friend
who answers the phone—
it’s pretty rare.

I’m not a good friend,
by any stretch—
yet I’ll help you,
if I can.

Yeah okay so I’m a bad friend—
but fairly honest,
if that counts.

Photo by Anna Shevchuk on Pexels.com

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20 Comments

  2. Guilty as charged. Although I’ve learned a few tricks to appear socially acceptable. But I have to run by fast before anybody notices what a rhinoceros I am.

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  4. When you turn up

    You turn up with gusto

    And the labels ‘good’ or ‘bad’ –

    they’re all at the extremes of the spectrum, no friend is any of those things all the time, if they were it would be suspect. What’s more important is that you’re a friend of virtue in Aristotelian terms. Those are the keepers. All the other types of friendship are of utility or pleasure and they’re for the straight-laced among the population. The friendships based on virtue have mutual love and respect, admiration for each other’s goodness, and a desire for the other person’s well-being. The utility- and pleasure-based friendships require constant contact to exist — you must be ‘good’ all the time, you must be present and of use. Otherwise where is your value? But in the virtue friendship you are a friend because of that mutual love. And that doesn’t serve any masters. Not the master of pleasure, nor the master of utility. It is a rare, deep, and long-lasting friendship.

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      1. It really resonates, doesn’t it? When I read about this a little while back, it made so much sense to me. The more I look at long-lasting relationships, the more I see these patterns.

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      3. For a long time I couldn’t understand why so many of my longest friendships would go for sometimes 6 months or more between us talking to each other. It didn’t mean we didn’t care. In fact, when we’d come together, the love was still there. It’s just a different kind of friendship.

        Liked by 1 person

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