“Let’s go out!”
Sure, but why?
Are we going out because you are trying to get to know me better, enjoy spending time with me and want to do that in another probably interesting location or do you just want to go to a certain place and/or explore a certain matter and just do not want to do that alone? In other words, are you looking for a friend or a chaperone? How do you know the difference? Do you feel comfortable to sit for 2-hours in a house with each person you want to go out hiking with (as an example), doing nothing particularly stimulating (like knitting, cleaning, etc.)? Are you open to being a potential first person to be contacted in situations of emergency for someone you go out often with? If no, then are you really friends with them? Or are you just mutually chaperoning each other?
Don’t get me wrong, chaperoning can be the first stage to actual friendship, but if you aren’t taking time to do more mundane things with the same people (especially after years of probably knowing these people), then there is a chance your path to friendship would take significantly much longer time or you might never stop being just chaperones to each other.
The term ‘friend‘ is used rather casually in today’s world (probably because it has a myriad of meanings in publicly-available dictionaries) and while that might not necessarily be an all-out bad thing, it could make it a little difficult to properly discern what your intentions toward someone you hangout with might be and what their intentions toward you might be. Oxford dictionary’s definition of a friend as someone you have a bond of mutual affection with (typically exclusive of sexual and/or familial relations) is of particular interest for this topic. Mutual affection means that all parties involved show a similar level of affection to each other for a friendship to be considered as existent. ‘Affection‘, according to the Oxford dictionary, again, is a gentle feeling of fondness or liking, and one of the unarguable ways of demonstrating affection is by giving a level of undivided attention from your time to someone(s) you are affectionate towards (Five Ways to Express Love). Another way of demonstrating this is by acts of sacrifice and/or kindness to the one(s) you are affectionate towards, amongst others. Some might say that that’s more a definition of a ‘best-friend’, but I disagree. A best-friend would mean the one you feel closest to and more affectionate to out of an already existing group of people that you already have affection towards – just like having a best-food just means the food you enjoy eating the most and not necessarily the only food you eat (all things being equal).
A Chaperone, on the other hand, according to Oxford dictionary, is a person who accompanies and looks after another person or group of people. So, essentially, if your interest, as an example, is to go see a specific place or item or perform a specific activity, and you find someone else who is interested in a similar thing and you both agree to go together without all the other aforementioned characteristics that define friendship, then aren’t you just chaperoning each other?
You see, friendship involves more selflessness while with chaperoning you can get away with being more self-centered. I wouldn’t say either is a wrong approach – so long as you are clear concerning what you are looking for and the other person(s) is also clear concerning your intentions.
What do you think about this topic? Do you think you are friends with the people you hang out with, often?
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Experiences of journeying humans 