Friends and Enemies: Our Need to Love and Hate. Dorothy Rowe

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ said, ‘I was invited to submit a design for a particular project. I was interested in doing this because it was something I hadn’t attempted before and it was a chance to try out some ideas, but I wasn’t passionately wedded to the design I developed. I’m too long in the tooth now to get overinvolved in the work I do, but it was interesting and I wanted feedback from the man who’d commissioned it. Well, this person was someone I’d known for years. I knew him socially as well as through work, and I thought of us as being friends, not close friends, but friends. One thing I knew about him was that he really liked to be liked. I never saw this as a problem because he’s a really likeable guy. Everybody likes him. I never thought this would take precedence over the work. Yet this is just what happened. He couldn’t bring himself to say he didn’t like my work because he thought that would mean I wouldn’t like him. That was just ridiculous. It never crossed my mind that his opinion about this piece of work would cause me to dislike him. I never think about whether I like or dislike people because on the whole I really like people. I can think of only one person I actually dislike, and that’s very personal. A lot of people I judge very harshly but I don’t dislike them. It mightn’t always be liking but I guess I feel sorry for people. Everyone gets a rotten deal one way or another. Anyway, what happened was that there was a big performance in which he talked to other people but he didn’t talk to me. The first I knew of it was when a mutual friend – you know the sort of friend who can’t get to you quick enough with bad news – rang me to say he’d spoken to her husband and of course her husband had told her. He should have just given me his opinion straight but he didn’t. It really wasn’t any big deal but at the time I thought it was important. I came to feel that he’d acted in bad faith. That’s a harsh judgement but that’s me. I think that worrying about whether people like you is a weakness.’

      The lack of understanding and tolerance between an introvert and an extravert can become the basis for enmity.

      Perhaps the greatest contrast between friendship and enmity is that friendships are often difficult to establish and always hard to maintain, while enmities are easy to establish and simple to maintain. Friendships always involve trying to understand another person and, in opening yourself to that person, making yourself vulnerable. Enmity always involves turning the enemy into an object which requires no understanding and, in closing yourself off from the other person, making yourself aggressive and strong. Enmity always makes us less of a human being and friendship makes us more. To achieve that more is not easy.

      I have been asking people whether they find friendship easy. The consensus of opinion is that friendship is demanding and difficult.

      When I asked Miles if he found it easy to make friends he said, ‘It is quite hard.’ I asked him what he found hard about it and he said, ‘Well, if there’s someone new the teachers want you to be nice to her and if you really don’t like her, or him, at all, it’s very difficult and she can’t be a real friend to you.’

      ‘When you meet somebody you think you might like, do you find it hard then to be friends?’

      ‘Sometimes, but sometimes it’s easy.’

      ‘What makes the difference?’

      ‘Well, if it’s someone you like but they’re not so keen on you, it’s quite hard. Or if you like one thing and the other person didn’t, and that person hated it and threw it away, then that would be quite hard because you’d be using it and the other person would be wrecking it.’

      Miles has spent seven years of his life negotiating his friendships, first with family and family friends, and then with fellow pupils. He is a warm, outgoing boy, keenly interested in other people and in the world around him, he has the unwavering support of his parents, yet he finds friendship far from easy. How much more difficult is friendship for someone who, no matter how warm and friendly they might be, has no secure background.

      Diyana was enjoying her life in Sarajevo when the war came and destroyed much of what she held dear. After enduring months of shelling and sniper fire from the Serbs she made a desperate and dangerous journey with her little daughter from Sarajevo to London, where she found asylum. I asked her, ‘How easy are you finding it to meet people here and really make friends?’

      She said, ‘It’s easy to meet people, very easy, but it’s very difficult to make a friend and start a real friendship. First of all you don’t understand the people – it’s not just a matter of language, it’s a matter of a different mentality as well. Sometimes you don’t understand somebody who is maybe offering you help, maybe really wants to help you and to make a friendship with you, but you just can’t understand. It can take years and years to get used to English people. I don’t think they’re worse than my people, or that they are any worse than any people in the world, you just need time to get to know the English.’

      How many times have I heard an Australian or an American say that about the English! I said, ‘Everyone who comes here says that.’

      Diyana went on, ‘I find it very easy to communicate with them because they don’t ask you very much – maybe they don’t want to know much about you. In this situation it’s very good for me not to speak a lot about my past, so if they don’t ask me it’s good. But you can’t start a real relationship with somebody who doesn’t know anything about you and you don’t know anything about them. It’s maybe too idealistic to expect that. You have to ask somebody about their home town, their family, their parents.’

      ‘Do you feel they aren’t interested or do they feel they shouldn’t ask questions?’

      ‘I think they were brought up not to ask questions, to keep at a distance. I think maybe they could be much better, much closer to foreigners, but they don’t know how to approach. Maybe it’s better for me to think that. I don’t want to think they don’t want to approach.’

      I talked about my experience as an Australian in England. I said, ‘Sometimes people don’t know how to frame a question because they don’t know enough about your background to frame a sensible question. I’ve met hundreds of English people – they know I’m Australian as soon as I speak – and the only thing they know about Australia is the weather. They say, “Don’t you miss the wonderful weather?” But they don’t ask other questions unless they’ve been to Australia, or they’ve got a relative there, when they’ll say, “Perhaps you’ve met my relative. She lives in New Zealand.” New Zealand is fifteen hundred miles away from Sydney.’

      Diyana recognized what I was describing. ‘When I’m asked where I’m from – because after the first sentence they discover I’m not from here – and I say, “I’m from Europe.” “Which part of Europe?” they’ll say. “Is it Poland?” And I say, “Not Poland. It’s Bosnia, the former Yugoslavia.” And they say, “There was a terrible war down there. Is it still on?” or something like that. And I can’t go on with the conversation. It’s finished before it’s started. I just answer sometimes, “Fortunately not. It’s finished now.” But that’s all they can ask you. Not all of them, of course – I don’t want to insult them.’

      After a year or so in London Diyana had met a few people who had a good knowledge of what went on in Bosnia, and who knew that in Bosnia, as in Lebanon, the war might be over but the peace has not been made. She had made friends, but friendship is not easy to maintain when one has little money and every day brings more problems to be overcome.

      Indeed friendship is not easy for any of us. This is the consensus of opinion of the many people of whom I asked the question, ‘Is friendship easy?’ Here are some of the answers from the participants of my workshop:

      • ‘I don’t think it possible to maintain the sort of relationship which I call friendship with any more than a small number of people because it requires me putting СКАЧАТЬ