Trusted Friend Is the Best Relative – විස්සෑසා පරමා ඥාතී

In a poem in the book Dhammapadaya, one verse tells us Trusted Friend Is the Best Relative.

So let us first ask ourselves who is a Trusted Friend?

For me, a trusted friend is someone I can be open, honest, and transparent with and vice versa. Someone who clearly communicates what they can offer in their friendship, and what the boundary lines are.  Someone who is willing to have a threshold for their boundary and forgive when the threshold is crossed. Someone who is honest with you in your good, bad, and ugly times. Someone who chooses to be true to themselves, and work for God or Collective Goodness of the world, over serving an individual. Someone who does not participate in something that has conflict of interest when considering the friendship, or given such a situation, handle responsibly or consult a mediator.

Now this what I have described, I know I haven’t always been able to stick to. I added a few in there to bring me into the mix .. lol (Yep, if you want your definition you write, I don’t want to write a definition and not include myself in it 😂😂)

Relative is someone we are connected in our bloodline of this form. We may have trusted friends in there we may not. No different to how we collect friendships along the way.

There is also a saying called blood is thicker than water, which is pointing to the characteristics of relatives rather than the obvious science in blood’s thickness.

I have observed that, the blood is thicker than water only applies to situations when the bloodline is not dragged into the mix.  As in, if you do something naughty, your relatives will tend to have more tolerance than friends, but not if there is “Brand Damage”.

Friendship problems are different, they don’t have a common brand with you, so you can do the dirtiest thing and they will have your back as long as it doesn’t disturb them. But they may have only limited time allocation, space, or investment in you.

So, now we see why we sometimes don’t have any friends or relatives left .. 😂😂😂

Anyway, I think the better relationship is the trusted friendship, whether they have a bloodline connection in this form or not

One have more space to move and breath there, and the relationship also doesn’t have unnecessarily burden and weight.

– Nim –

P.S: The reason I used a picture from last night’s Footy match is to show how Footy Players have a form of a trusted friendship They work for a club and not necessarily God, but within that structure they display good sportsmanship. Even though they fight in the field, after that match they go check if the other dude is ok, and life goes on. Life is also a game. The sooner we become good team mates in playing life, the soon we we become responsible citizens of planet earth and enjoy life instead of prolong the suffering caused by greed, aversion, and dillusion. I feel if we can work on dillusion, managing greed and aversion is a piece of cake!!!