Growing up in the generation of the participation award, myself and my peers have become accustom to constant and positive gratification. We want to be pat on the head and told we always look our best and we are always doing our best. Constructive criticism and negative feedback are things that many millennials don’t accept graciously, and as a result many people pursue friendships that provide them with all the good and none of the bad.
We all want friends that tell us how great we are and never let us know when we are being less than perfect friends, humans, significant others, ect. But having friendships that provide us with anything less than honesty doesn’t allow us to fully utilize the purpose of friendship.
Sometimes we mistake this as a sign of finding community, like when we finally find the place where we belong people will stop pointing out our “flaws." The problem with this logic is that we all have “flaws," and they aren’t really flaws. They are more than often things about ourselves to notice and sometimes work on, because sometimes they are the part or parts of us that are hindering in some way.
In this case, any good friend should have the balls to point it out to you, to nudge you in a direction of growth. A real friend will love you enough to tell you when you are being a cotton headed ninny muggin, not because they think that is who you really are, but because they see potential in you to be better than that.
I guess my point is stop looking for and being okay with friendships where you all just sit around and soak up each other’s awesomeness. We are social creatures and have been graced with this unique ability as a species to communicate and connect. Take advantage of that. The other piece of that is being open to criticism; taking it as a compliment that someone cares enough about you to let you know when there is something you could be doing to make yourself a more fantastic human being. We have so much to learn from each other, but in order to learn from our friendships we have to remember that we owe each other a listening ear and a deep sense of honesty. Be open, be kind, and be real, anything less and you are doing your friends no favors, I promise.
