The statement conceals two paradoxes with which I could barely agree. One is that we should never make an arbitrary judgement to determine which side is “better”. Fun friends and helpful friends are both great treasure in our social life. We can’t just simply overgeneralize a relationship from complexity into a rather na?ve conclusion.
The other one is more controdictory: can’t we have a friend who both is a fun person and will help us when we are in need? Friends are not comedians who make people laugh, nor simple philanthropists ready to offer people their love and care. They are not firemen whose duty is ready for saving lives. Friends are the people we would love to share and feel comfortable around.
My best friends are all fun people to hang out. Mr. Hou is one of them. I made friends with him because he seemed a very unique and wise person to me. When we were little, the most common topic we talked about is Mongolian Empire. It sounds extremely dorky when I look back right now. Back then we even had fantacized we were actual Mongolian warriors and trying to look for costumes online together. I didn’t “choose” him to be my friend. Neither did I expect that he would help me when I was in need. Instead when he later studied in the UK, I encountered my hardest time in my life in China. However, I knew that he was experiencing his own problems and chose not to even bother him. I was pretty sure he was willing just buy a ticket flying back to China simply for talking me through if he knew my situation. But this is not the standard that I make friends.
He and my other best friends always remind me of the stories of several figures dating back to the Six Dynasties Period about 1500 years ago: a group of friends dived into the deep mountain and settled there because of political crisis. They drank and wrote poems, spending rest of their time playing music and chasing for what they thought was the real nature of life. They had fun and they seemed never to be “in need”.
We never make friends for backing them up for necessity. We never “choose” them for any particular reason but to have fun with them. Let me use a word “by-product” to describe what friends always give us a hand when we are in need. The reason is simple: we are fun and sincere people in their eyes. We deserve all this.
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