Support System

Over a beer yesterday I was talking to my friends about always supporting each other. Somedays we have trouble supporting each other when we don't necessarily fully agree with the decisions that our friends make. We can watch our friends make so many mistakes even when we know that they are making them. I know my friends spent a large part of last year watching me make mistakes and were supportive anyways.

I think it is a mark of friendship to be there for your friends even when you don't necessarily approve of their choices. For the most part, that is really what friends are there for. When we screw up and make the wrong decisions, friends are the ones we call to take care of the plane crash that is our life. Support is not what we give to our friends only when we decide that they are making the right decision. That support is needed as well, but not nearly as much. Support is what exists in friendships when someone is making a terrible mistake and all you can do is help pick up the pieces when it falls apart.

It's unfair to withold support from a friend until they support you. Friendship is not something that holds back until there is equal support because that's not love. Friendship is acknowledging that you will be there even when you don't agree, most especially when you don't agree. Friendship is holding a hand to help heal a broken heart and putting a smile on your face to match the smile on someone else's. Somedays it's hard because you think you can see clearly the end result and you don't like. The thing we have to remember is that our perceptions are changed by what we know and how we know the person we love. We aren't inside their heads and we can't be. But that's not really the point of being a good friend. Who really wants to be friends with a carbon copy of themselves? That would be boring. Our friends are not supposed to live our lives. That's not how we choose our friends. They don't live our lives, but they do complement them. They make life fuller and more complete for being there for us. And we do the same for them.

Friendship isn't about always about understanding the choices our friends make. It is about accepting and supporting them though. It's about loving them no matter what. No matter how many times they may screw up or make huge mistakes, it's being there for them and forming their support system. That's what friends are really for.