Ch3 Pt 5 A-4: Write about, "Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures."
Love Helps and Kills
A Roman philosopher Seneca once said, "Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures." To understand friendship and love better, I compared these notions in the aspects of functions and definition. Friendship and love basically have similar functions. From friends or lovers, we seek and give care, help, support, intimacy, or entertainment. On the other hand, the criteria that decides whether a relationship is a friendship or love is vague. It differs from people to people so there is no absolute touchstone, but it is the order of priority in my opinion. I disagree with considering friendship and love a different notion, and claim that the border between the two is obscure; love is a developed form of friendship, and therefore I agree that friendship always benefits but love sometimes injures.
To deal with how friendships benefit and love injures sometimes, I must prove the premise that love is a developed form of friendship. I believe what we call love is not always a romantic one. For example, my family members always say, "I love you," when we hang up on each other. It feels awkward and embarrassing when I say it in a public transportation, but that is a custom in my family. So, love is not limited to a romantic partner, but a friend, family, and lover can all be loved. I love some of my friends, and that means I care about them dearly. Therefore, love and friendship differs because of order of priority, or by how strong the relationship is.
Friendship and love is similar in functions. In both relationships, we are looking for affection, assist, encouragement, joy, and warmth, while we try to give them back at the same time. For example, some of my friends live alone in Seoul to finish their college. My friend Jeonghoon is one of them and sometimes calls me to drink together. We take burdens and pains from each other. At the same time, that is what the lovers do. They call when they are hurt, and emotionally support each other. Therefore, I insist that friendship and love serves similar functions.
Lastly, love hurts sometimes and friendship always benefits because when you love someone, you care about them and expect more than you would from just a friend. Even between closer friends, they ask and give more than they would to normal people. For incidence, When I first broke up with my girlfriend, I was away from my family and I could not get consolation from them. There were not many friends in Seoul because I am from a small town in southern region of Korea and not many close friends came up to here with me. Fortunately, one of my closest friend came to Seoul with me and was living in Shinchon at that time. So, I called him and talked about my agony. My friend supported and gave some advices to deal with my feelings.
To sum up, friendship develops to be love, and the boundary of them is unclear. Love includes those relationships between lovers, family members, and friends. So, the difference between those two is the degree of intimacy or affection, and they share functions in common. Finally, I support the saying, "Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures," because loved ones are placed deep down the soul and have powerful influence on the person in both positive and negative ways.
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