The Value of True Friendships

Everyone wants, and needs, friends-especially close friends. You can never say that you truly just want to be left alone, that you don't want or need to have any close friends. It's a Core Desire for human beings to interact with others-to like and be liked, to love and be loved. Close friends permit you to open up and have fun. They like and accept all the things that make you you-the good, the
bad, and the ugly. True friendship allows you to feel safe with another person, to be accepted by others-in spite of the things you do wrong and in spite of your idiosyncrasies.

Meaningful interaction with others is vital to your spiritual and physical well-being. We can't choose whether we need-or want-true friends, because we are simply not built that way. Few things in life are more precious than the close friends who share your interests, passions, concerns, needs, hopes, and fears. Ideally, one of these close friends becomes your mate for life.

When I was a child I had one friend, Teddy Begay, a Navajo boy. He was my best friend, and he often defended me. When I left the reservation, I didn't see Teddy again until many years later.

When I was forty, I reconnected with him, and we hit it off as if no time had passed at all. We talked about becoming blood brothers, an old Indian tradition. I asked him if the Navajos still did such things. Teddy checked with an old medicine man he knew and reported back that the ceremony hadn't been done in over a hundred years. The medicine man had never performed the ceremony but had been taught how many years earlier. Teddy and I asked the medicine man to perform the ceremony for us.

The ceremony was held in a hogan, a large mud hut with a door opening to the east, dirt floors, and a hole in the ceiling for smoke from the open fire to escape. Navajos came from miles around to participate because they wanted to see this unusual ceremony. The hogan was filled to capacity, with about twenty people sitting on sheepskins around its perimeter. The ceremony was done in the Navajo language, so Teddy translated for me. The medicine man built a fire in the center of the hogan and then chanted, prayed, counseled us, drew pictures in the dirt floor, and gave us things to eat and drink. In his prayer, he asked the Great Spirit to forgive him because he could not remember all of the ceremony, asking for it to be accepted. At one point the medicine man wept, and said that he'd never seen such love shown between a bilagona and a Navajo. At specific ceremonial intervals, each person in the hogan was given a chance to speak. Several guests apologized for the way I had been treated as a young boy.

The ceremony was a wonderful experience, lasting about thirteen hours without a stop. Teddy and I laughed when we wondered how long it would have taken had the medicine man remembered the entire ceremony.

I came away from this experience with a deep, abiding love for my new blood brother, as well as for the Navajo nation, particularly those in attendance. Teddy's mother, who speaks no English, is now my mother, too. After the ceremony I gave my new Navajo mother a hug and she hugged me back, which was unusual since Navajos of her generation didn't show affection by hugging. She smiled and called me shiyazhi (shi-yaw-zhee), "my son," and I called her shima (shih-MAR), my mother. I was given a special shawl, allowing me entrance to Navajo ceremonies or meetings.

The more friendships you have, the more open interactions you will have with others, and the more your life will come together. Your family life will improve, your self-image will be enhanced, and you'll enjoy doing what it takes when you're with friends. With true friends, you can be yourself.

With close friends, you interact at a heartfelt level. When it comes to your friends, their feelings and needs are just as important to you as yours are to them. They care and worry about you, and you do the same for them. As you treat others this way, you experience profound happiness and contentment. With friends at your side, you never have to face the world alone.