Speech

It’s About Friendship

      All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the World, the Master and the Creator of everything in the Universe, the Destroyer of all oppressors and the Hope of the oppressed, for enabling us to meet together in the simple but peaceful place.

      Peace and salutation be upon to the noble Prophet of Islam, Muhammad S.A.W. and his household, his companions and his faithful followers who strive in Allah’s religion of Islam.

      I express my gratitude from the bottom of my deepest hearth to Mrs. Citra for giving me valuable chance so that I can speak in front of you all. I take this great opportunity to deliver a speech under the title; ”It’s About Friendship” 

      What is friendship? Does anyone here know what friendship is? I bet all of you know it. Now, is there anyone that have a close friend? And what kind of friendship do you have? I hope it’s a good relationship.

      Nowadays friendship among people is important, especially for us who need someone that can be our motivator or someone that can comfort us when we have problems, and also  a friend to hang out with. There’s a quote that “Friendship is not a must”. Yes, that quote is true because we can’t bond other people to understand us always.

      We often see a fight between friends. The cause can be a small thing just like because of a misunderstanding such as a boy, another friend, being ignore, or it is just because the way how our friend treats us. A small thing that can be a big problem in the relationship.

The relationship that bonds our friend to always understand their feelings and never wanted to understand our feelings, or being selfish can’t be tolerated. Because we have a rightful authority to make a lot of friendships.

      Well, all those things  can be a wrong way of understanding a relationship. Especially, when the friendship turns to be a slavery; it is because the way  our friends treat us as her/his slave. Maybe the word slave is too extreme, but that kind of relationships do exist. But we sometime  cannot disobey their order to us, because we are afraid that they will bully us or stay away from us so that we don’t have  another friend to share with since we are not  social or extrovert  persons.
      Well then, what is friendship?
      According to Santrock (1998), the most common characteristic of friendship is the intimacy and similarities.
      Intimacy can be defined as self-disclosure and other personal thoughts. Because of this closeness, children want to spend time with friends and express a more positive effect on friends than non-friends (Hartub, 1989).
      From that definition we know that friendship  started from the intimacy and similarities. And friendship also have  functions.
      The  friendship that we got can be a good reationship when we already have all what Santrock (1998) mentions about six important functions of friendship, those are :

1.   As a friend (companionship)

2.   As the driving force (stimulation), it means that

3.   As a physical support (physical support)

4.   In support of the ego (ego support)

5.   As social comparison (social comparison), it means that we can compared

6.   As provide familiarity and attention (intimacy/affection)

      Then what should we do if there’s a fight between friends in a relationship?

    If we have a fight with our best friend just because of jealousy, we have to think over the friendship. Has the friendship been a healthy friendship ? Has the friendship fulfilled all the functions of friendship as Santrock said? Can we sit together talking about the best way to make the friendship a mutual relationship that bring any goods for the persons in it?

      So, relationship between friends is a need for us, but we have to decide what kind of relationship we would like to have with our friends. Friendship is important, but it is more important to be a good friend or a good person in the relationship we have.