You have long been friends with someone. If they do something that you don’t like, should you still be friends with them? (Done in about 35 minutes)
We are living in an era in the history that people are more connected and in touch than ever before. We see and encounter many people in the university or at work every day. However, it is often tricky to find the correct match as a friend. In my experience, it is almost impossible to find people who resemble your attitude and behavior, and most of the time people are distinct from you, and if we try to be friends with people who are alike, we would end up being lonely and miserable. In my point of view, minor differences and disagreements among friends are acceptable, and we should not ruin our long-term friendships for trivial matters.
First of all, I believe it is not possible to find and encounter people who are exactly your identical, even if we were able to find one, they will not outnumber 2 or 3. In school or at work we meet many people with different attitude and perspective who are actually a nice bunch, and it is not a rational decision to ignore most of them only because they are different from us. When it comes to our old friends, it gets even more serious. We cannot eliminate our long-term friendship with someone who has done something that we did not like it. Back in university, I recall we had a diverse population, who sound totally different from one another. But I could manage slight friendships with many of them, and a few close with the others.
Next, I contend that people who break up with their close friends for minor disagreements or tension will eventually end up being miserable and lonely. When you try to punish your friends by ending your friendship with them for different reasons, you would no longer have any friends left, as you crossed most of them. And when it comes to adult people, it gets more arduous for them to find new friends, as a result, they will be alone. I have a friend who is very meticulous in choosing friends. He shed most of his mates for unimportant reasons, and apparently, now he is a lonely person who is even facing trouble in his love life.
Last but not the least, I think good friends must help each other in various situations. Even if our friends have committed a totally wrong act, we should not leave them behind, but help them out of it. They may not be aware of their wrongdoings or has done it unintentionally. I used to have an old friend, who I met him in a robotic competition and was a genius. One day as soon as I realized that he was smoking, I ended my friendship with him and never looked back. Now I regret what I have done and I think I should have helped him or at least talked to him about it so as to convince him not to smoke anymore, but I did not. Hence, I lost one of my best friends.
For all aforementioned reasons, I strongly believe that we should not get rid of our friends for some trivial reasons, otherwise we would end up being miserable and lonely, while we could not get along with anyone anymore. People are different from each other and it is the fact that makes the world a beautiful place. Who can tolerate a world comprised of citizens who look and sound exactly like each other?!