A friend is someone who allows your being to unfold in the present moment. They don't judge your actions or inactions based on their previous experiences with other people.
As human beings, we have all experienced our fair share of let-downs, upsets, and disappointments with people over the course of our lives. Each of these experiences have helped to shape us over the years, and because we are creatures of habit, we build up walls to prevent those things from happening to us again; walls which only grow thicker the more those things end up happening to us. We take these walls with us as we move forward in life, as we meet new people and make new friends, not realizing that keeping ourselves stuck on the disappointments of the past prevents us from truly having one of the things that true friendship depends on most: trust.
Far too often, in our dealings with our friends, we are afraid to give them our trust because of the numerous times in the past that we have given our trust away to people whom we thought were our true friends, only to have that trust betrayed. We are scared to throw ourselves fully into our relationship with our friend because we are paralyzed by the fear that what happened with people before will happen again with our friend now. In an effort to protect ourselves from feeling hurt again, we keep ourselves from putting too much stock into the relationship with our friend. However, in doing so, you are not being authentic with your friend, and you are depriving them of a vital element of friendship, trust.
This trust isn't merely the kind of trust that encourages friends to share secrets with each other. This trust is the kind of trust that says, "You are my friend, and I trust that you are always being honest and upfront with me, because that's what friends do." It is the kind of trust that allows us to be vulnerable with our friend, the kind of trust that inspires confidence in the idea that our friend will always support us and always be there for us. This trust cannot exist if we are always too cautious about our involvement with our friend because of the things that have happened to us in the past. And if this trust cannot exist, then a true friendship cannot blossom between you and the person you call your friend.
There simply is no room for true friendship to blossom when you do not trust your friend. This is because true friendship relies on companionship, and a companionship means nothing if that trust is not there. For friendship to thrive, we need to be able to trust our friend instead of doubting their every action or motive based on our past experiences with other people. Holding our friend to the standard that we set after being let down last time tells them that we doubt their sincerity when it comes to their desire to be our true friend, that we do not actually trust them.
If we constantly judge their every action or lack of action based on the people from our past, we place our friend in a cage of our own design, a cage shaped by the shortcomings of other people, and prevent ourselves from having an unchanging love for our friend. Instead, as each disappointment sets in, our love for our friend begins to change; it begins to gradually decrease, because in its place grows a wall of caution, fear, and eventually, resentment. If we are to develop lasting relationships with the people whom we call our true friends, we cannot measure their shortcomings against the shortcomings of people from our past. We cannot assume that their motives and thought processes are the same as the motives and thought processes of those who have let us down in the past.
If we are to be true friends with them, we must allow them to be fully themselves and trust that they are being genuine with us and not intentionally trying to disappoint us. Trust in our friend is a key element of Friendship In a New Age.