The one best quality of a true friend

If I gave you one wish as the quality you could choose that would be in your best friend, what would it be?  For me it would be that they would approach conflict maturely, because it’s not long in this life before we end up in conflict with those who are closest to us.

It would be unfair to expect our friend or partner to be great at handling conflict, however, if we weren’t equally aligned and committed.

What if we could exist in a world where we could coexist with our friends, partners, associates, colleagues and family members in peace?  Is that a pipedream?  Unrealistic?

In a world that seems more divided than ever, it can seem unrealistic, and we can begin to accept that there will be relational brokenness.  It’s actually a healthy paradigm to hold in tension with the ideal of being committed to our relationships before the issues that would divide us.  A mature mindset needs to hold this tension, because there are people, no matter our commitment to them, who will break ties, who will insist on their own way, who will see things definitively.

If only we could be a friend, a partner, a boss, a co-worker, a parent, who would be so steadfastly committed to relationship that we would hold out hope that we might work through conflict.  To do this we would need to accept that there are times when we do disagree, and that disagreement can easily threaten the breach of our terms of acceptability.  Sure, there are times when we cannot accept certain behaviours, when we need to institute boundaries, where to not would be a failure of love.

Perhaps that’s what we might lament most of all as we ponder what little separates otherwise close friends, partners, families — that there wasn’t the commitment to relationship that we hoped there would have been.  Maybe we didn’t understand how important an issue was for the other person.  We may have paid a dear price; something we need to put down to raw and painful experience.

Maybe this is something that helps clarify the friendships and partnerships and relationships we cherish most — the safety that another gives us and the safety we give them; to give a third chance, provided there is adequate repentance.  And that’s the most beautiful quality of all in relationships between two parties — the quality that sees both capable of repenting before the other because their love for the other means the most.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash