A true friend is/is not…

Throughout my life I have had many people of whom I have labeled my “friend”. As a young kid, a friend was anyone who would talk to me. But as soon as they started to ignore me, I realized there were more qualities needed to define someone as my friend. Though I can now say I have a plethora of friends, what truly comforts me is the presence of a true friend. It is my firm belief that each of us yearns for at least one true friend. This begs the question: “What is a true friend?” I will attempt to answer this question by discussing what a true friend is, as well as what a true friend is not. Before going further though, I ask that you seriously consider this following blanket statement as you read these rules of true friendship:

If you are not a true friend, you do not deserve to have a true friend. You have to be a true friend if you expect to have a true friend.

First, let’s explore what a true friend is NOT:

• A true friend does not talk behind your back about how horrible you are, and save face when you are around. • A true friend does not lie to you. Ever. • A true friend does not shut you out when you are trying to truly help. • A true friend is not someone who bullies, forces, or manipulates you into doing something that may be harmful to you. This is never acceptable under any circumstances. • A true friend never attempts to hurt you physically or emotionally. This is abusive and controlling, and definitely not a true friend. Your friend should never disrespect you in any way. • A true friend will never exploit you as they see fit. • A true friend is not someone that says they are your friend, all the while treating you like shit. • A true friend does not walk on eggs shells or be careful with you because they are scared of your reaction. • A true friend does not hold grudges against you. • A true friend does not continually flake on you. • A true friend will not avoid, reject, or treat you differently when you are in public. • A true friend will not abandon you during hard times, including when those hard times involve the both of you.

Second, let’s explore what a true friend IS:

• A true friend will truly forgive you. • A true friend stands at your side even when you are making a fool out of yourself. • A true friend follows through with their commitments. • A true friend apologizes when they have done you wrong. • A true friend respects you at ALL times. • A true friend is completely honest with you. • A true friend will lovingly correct you when you have gone against your principles. • A true friend will visit with you, even if they presently don’t want to. • A true friend puts themselves in your shoes. They desire to know and understand your thrills and chills. • A true friend will give to you as much as you give to them. At times, a true friend will give more than what you give. • A true friend loves you as you, accepting your hang-ups and differences. • A true friend is willing to defend and fight for you. • A true friend allows their soul to be naked before you without shame. • A true friend knows when you’re happy/sad, even when you don’t. • A true friend is happy when you’re happy and is sad when you’re sad. • A true friend thinks of you, even when you don’t think of yourself. • A true friend loves you, even when you are being a butt-head and not particularly likable at the moment.

I realize that these two lists are by no means in their entirety. My hope in developing it is to help people to deeply consider if they are a true friend, as well as who their true friend(s) are. It may seem that my list of qualifications is too lofty and demands utter perfection. On the contrary, if you read closely to what I just wrote you will discover that a true friend is not a perfect friend, but striving to be a true friend. After all, that’s what makes friendship fun; enduring the bumps and trials in your journey together! There is a cost in obtaining a true friend; you must be one yourself.

This c*nt thinks Juicy Couture is her deity. Her mom goes and f*cks into money so she spreads her legs to the next K-fed for a shot of patron while her step-dad works his ass off to support her degree of prostitution in college. She disrespects everyone’s house by vomiting everywhere and tried to f*ck every small d*ck like her plastic mom.

It’s only a matter of time before she’s in rehab telling everyone how good she’s doing. 

“My name is Molly Pink and I’m a yarnoholic,” I announced to my crochet group the Tarzana Hookers as I put my stash on the table. Okay, maybe there wasn’t really any such organization as Yarnoholics Anonymous and calling myself an addict was a bit of a stretch, but I was just feeling a little guilty about the yarn I’d just bought. Even though I was new to crocheting, I couldn’t seem to leave a yarn store empty-handed. What was I to do this time? The recycled silk was beautiful, in limited quantity and at a special price. Besides, with the Tarzana Hookers meeting again, I was sure to find something fabulous to make with the three skeins. Well, six skeins if you counted the other three I needed to mix with the first three because the woman at the yarn store said that recycled silk was too thin to go it alone. 

The Tarzana part of our name referred to Tarzana, California. Technically the San Fernando Valley community was part of the city of Los Angeles, but the people on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains - or over the hill, as it’s commonly referred to - looked at us Valleites as at least one step behind them in the sophistication department. 

Our weather was a step behind in the comfort department. It was hotter in the summer and colder in the winter, though this May morning it was cool and cloudy on both sides of the hill. I dealt with it by wearing a white shirt with a sweater over it and a hoodie on top of that. As the day progressed and the sun came out, I’d start peeling off layers, then load everything back on as it got dark and the temperature dropped. It was standard operating procedure for May in southern California. 

Three times a week the Tarzana Hookers gathered at 10 a.m. in the event area of the neighborhood bookstore, Shedd & Royal Books and More. A long table was set up in an alcove with a large window facing Ventura Boulevard. We could look out at the street, and passersby could see there was something going on inside. This morning the light was flat and shadowless due to the silvery early-day clouds. 

I glanced around the table to see the crochet group’s response to my yarnaholic comment, hoping for a smile. Adele Abrams looked up from her work. 

“Pink, no matter how much yarn you have, I’m sure I have more.”

Some people would have said that to make me feel better, but Adele said it to irritate me; she called my by my last name for the same reason. We had a running rivalry that started when I got the job at Shedd & Royal Books and More after my husband Charlie died. Based on my experience putting on receptions and events for Charlie’s public relations firm, Mrs. Shedd, co-owner of the bookstore had hired me as event coordinator-community relations person. Adele had hoped to get promoted to my job. Instead, she’d gotten story time in the kids’ department. She still hadn’t gotten over it, and it’d been over a year. 

“And if you thought it was funny, it wasn’t - or even original,” Adele said with an implied groan in her voice. Adele Abrams had an ample build and an interesting fashion sense. She liked to think she had flair. Today’s ensemble was something of a cowgirl look. She wore boots and a long denim skirt decorated with big sewn-on doily type things. She toped it with a white western style shirt and a leather vest. Her brown hair had some new highlights and was pulled into a minuscule ponytail, with a battalion of clips keeping up the sides. 

Even as we talked she kept crocheting. Adele might be a little weird with her clothes, but she was top-notch with a crochet hook. 

I had kind of backed into becoming a Tarzana Hooker. It started with too much caramel corn. It was homemade and totally delicious, if I say so myself, but also totally bad for the fit of my khaki slacks. I’d reasoned that if I could occupy my fingers with something besides ferrying caramel corn to my mouth it might help. The Hookers were already meeting at the bookstore, but I didn’t want to be totally green when I joined. Actually, I didn’t want Adele to be the one to teach me, so when she wasn’t looking I had bought a kids’ kit we had in the children’s department and taught myself the basics. I’d shared the kit with my best friend Dinah and gotten her to join, too. 

I was still a newbie, but totally hooked on crochet. I loved watching a ball of yarn turn into something, even if I had to undo it a lot. It was soothing and relaxing, and somehow always left me feeling restored. And there was something wonderful about wrapping a pretty scarf around your neck and knowing you’d made it. 

Adele had accepted that I was part of the group, but never missed a chance to remind me how good she was and how I was still struggling. I noticed she was working with what appeared to be a ball of thin string and a small silver-colored hook. I couldn’t see what she was making at first, but as it got bigger, I realized it was a doily similar to the ones on her skirt. Maybe she was planning to start a fashion trend. 

“Sorry, dear, but Adele’s right about your yarnaholic comment not being original,” CeeCee Collins said. “We’ve all said something similar at one time or another. Let’s see what you’ve got.” She reached across the table and emptied my bag. The hanks of multi- colored silk tumbled on the table followed by the three companion skeins. The silk ones were shades of reds and warm tones, and the other three were a soft mauve. All were from the Himalayas and promised to help impoverished villagers, which made me feel better about my purchase. 

“It’s beautiful,” CeeCee said, fingering it. “You must give me details aboutwhere you got it.” Her real name was Connie Collins, but everybody knew her as CeeCee. She was the reason the Tarzana Hookers hadn’t been meeting for awhile. CeeCee was the host of a reality show called Making Amends. The point of the show was to give people a chance to confess to wrongs they’d done, and then the show helped the participants right them. There were a lot of tearful moments and a lot of embarrassing ones too - a winning combo that had turned it into a hit. The production had recently finished making another block of shows and had gone on hiatus so the Tarzana Hookers were back together. It had been too hard for CeeCee to commit to our usual three meetings a week when the show was taping, and though Adele had wanted to keep the meetings going without CeeCee, we had decided to wait until she was free. 

CeeCee and Adele were still vying to be head of the group. So far, CeeCee seemed to be wining. 

As usual CeeCee’s hair was poufed into a stiff bubble. It was that reddish, blondish sort of acrylic-looking color that never occurs without help. She favored velour warm-up suits in jewel tones. Due to the morning chill, she wore a white turtleneck shirt under her jade-colored jacket. She had barely stopped working during the interchange. She was so good at crocheting, I almost believed she could do it in her sleep. But I couldn’t figure out what she was making. It was round and brown. I leaned closer and she held it up. It looked like a furry donut with pink icing. 

Now we can continue with the next three verses from Verses on The Faith Mind, by The 3rd Chinese Zen Patriarch, Sengstau:

To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality.

The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth.

Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

Where does reality come from?  When you start looking into what you actually experience as opposed to what you are supposed to experience this becomes an interesting question.  For most of us, we use the evidence of our senses and declare that the objects are real. After all our senses are designed to sense and respond to the objects in the world. If you strike a hard object your hand will hurt; if you touch a hot stove you will pull your hand back and yell ouch! Objects and our senses seem inextricably connected.

But when you look a little deeper like we did in the blog: “Oneness is Your Natural State” you begin to recognize that, like in a dream, you actually experience the world in your mind. At this point you may feel that the world is unreal.  But wouldn’t this deny the sense of reality that the world seems to have?

Experience is much richer than words can convey_____________________________________________________________________________________

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Here’s the reason that this may seem confusing: your actual experience is much richer than words and thoughts can convey.  When you take your experience to be limited to words and thoughts, you miss the subtle richness of your actual experience.  This means that you have more choices than just real and unreal.

Another way of looking at this is that your sense of reality comes from you, not from the things that you see. That’s why if while reading this blog you begin to day dream, a whole new world appears; but you don’t feel as if reality went away. And then when the waking world comes back you don’t feel as if reality just returned.

Be centered in your natural state of reality 

     
When you just allow reality to return to its natural place, this all becomes very clear. However if instead of being centered in reality you remain centered in your thoughts, this verse will seem very obtuse and complicated.  This is a great lead in for the next two verses:

The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth.

Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

If thinking makes things so confusing and limits and usurps your real experience, then you should stop thinking and even talking, right? After all it’s your thoughts that lead you astray, or do they?  I think that this is a misinterpretation of these verses by someone who didn’t quite understand them, and someone who struggled mightily with his or her thoughts. These verses are a great example of trying to understand reality while remaining centered in your thoughts. From here the only thing you can do is shut off your thinking.

Notice the Depth of your Experience and you will be Free from Thought 
But while thoughts don’t have the power to define your experience, do they have the power to snatch your experience away? If you feel that thinking can destroy your experience, you will get caught up in another extreme view. Does the silent depth of the ocean depend on stopping the waves above? Similarly, does your experience of reality depend on stopping the thought waves on the surface of your mind?

Once you notice the depths of your experience, you will discover the meaning of being free from thought. You will be able to think all day and not have the least worry about thoughts affecting your actual experience.

To ignore these last two verses, return your sense of reality to its source 
Still confused, here’s an example that will make this clearer: I’m sure that you will agree that if you think, “I am a purple kangaroo,” you will not become a purple kangaroo.  If you need to experiment, think this thought again and again and see if it makes any difference.  Next stop thinking, “I am a purple kangaroo.” Do you become less of a purple kangaroo? Just consider all of your thoughts to be a purple kangaroo. Although they may describe a purple kangaroo, they do not describe your actual experience. Moreover the lack of thought does not make your direct experience any clearer.

Unless you give it to them, thoughts do not have the power to disturb you. When you return your identity and sense of reality to its original place, The One Mind, you will once again be undisturbed. This will have nothing to do with the thoughts that you think or don’t think. It will just come from abiding in your natural state of oneness. Then you will be the space that the thoughts go through. This space is free from the ups and downs of your thinking. So return your sense of reality to its source and there is nothing you will not be able to know. In other words, you will know what everything is; and furthermore you can ignore these last two verses.

Asking Question
Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants to can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman