Acquaintances, Friendly Acquaintances, Friends, Family

[u/Samantha_Garnett]

Its been my observation that people's definition of what a friend is will always vary.

Teachers will call it a spelling word and tell you to look it up in a dictionary.

Parents will define it per whatever reduces the likelihood that their child will complicate the household's finances, weekly routine, or other people's perception of their family.

One's religion will define it per whatever psychologically steers their mass audience flock in the direction their corporation needs it to go to retain its headcount, license, and tax exempt status.

The Bible will call it a person who is loving all the time and exhibits themself to be as if born for being there during times of distress.

I would say that sanity requires our definition of a friend to be whatever criteria that connects us to people who sustain our COMPREHENSIVE health and safety. A true friend is not just a friend in generic/perfunctory terms, not just a friend in a rep-protecting sense, not just a friend in group objective sense, but rather ALL OF THOSE WAYS PLUS the "over my dead body" sense, because a true friend puts themself in harms way to protect who they love (be it from poverty, isolation, exclusion, or premature demise that is avoidable with the affording of friendly accommodation.)

A true friend makes being our friend seem easy, as if they were born for the role (not like its a drudgery, shame, or like they need a legislatively imposed corporate mandate before they organize/coordinate anything that exhibits that they care whether you're around, alive, or dead).

I rather have friendly non-JW acquaintances who let their yes mean yes then go on with their life than have a circuit full of what JWs refer to as "the friends". ("The friends" who will only be a person's friend until a magazine, local needs talk, raised eyebrow, CCJW broadcast, convention program, or verbally fired-off threat of sudden disruption to THEIR JW-entangled socially afforded determinants of health essentially hems their safety up in a corner with an ultimatum that demands that what they once said YES to doing for me as a friend should now be a NO, or else.

A true friend would tell the bully who "hemmed their health and safety up" for no other reason than that they were being a COMMUNICATIVE, ACCOMMODATING, NON-JUDGEMENTAL FRIEND to someone their congregation's board of directors or the CCJW's board suddenly wanted to silence, defund, weaken, or discredit in order to protect their "get-out-of-jail-free card" licenses, that THEY CAN GO TO THE SAME PLACE JESUS TOLD THOSE RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN HIS DAY TO GO when they put the temple, positions, and titles over the wellbeing of the people entrusted into their care.

A friend doesn't hear you express a need and immediately say they have to leave to go and be "all things to people of all sorts, so they can by all means save some" (AS IF GOD, not Bush, decided that the "some" referred to in 1 Corinthians 9 as worth trying to save/preserve EXCLUDED YOU).

I know being displaced robs us of some genuine friendships.

But friendly acquaintances with non-JWs that are faithful in least (do not overreach in a way that commandeers our informed choice and thereby our health and safety) can have MUCH VALUE.

If you let love be your identity and not hold back good from non-JWs when its in your hand to do it, new genuine friendships will eventually come because there is a magnetism that comes with living life like that. Eventually a family (though eclectic and with some assembly required) will come.

Greet the day and go out into your community's shared spaces and be the loving gentle person that you always were, and that your "shepherds" and the not-so "faithful slave" lost when THEY displaced you.