佚名/Anonymous
Friends play an important part in our lives, and although we may take the friendship for granted, we often don’t clearly understand how we make friends. While we get on well with a number of people, we are usually friends with only a few—for example, the average among students is about 6 per person. In all the cases of friendly relationships, two people like one another and enjoy being together, but beyond that, the degree of intimacy between them and the reasons for their shared interest change greatly. As we get to know people, we consider things like age, race, economic conditions, social positions and intelligence. Although these reasons are not of prime importance, it is more difficult to get on with people when there is a great difference in age and background.
Some friendly relationships can be kept on argument and discussion, but it is usual for close friends to have similar ideas and beliefs, to have opinions and interests in common—they often talk about“being on the same wavelength”. It generally takes time to reach this point. And the more intimate people become, the more they depend on one another. People want to do friends favors and hate to break a promise. Equally, friends have to learn to put up with bad habits and to accept differences of opinion.
In contrast with marriage, there are no friendship ceremonies to strengthen the association between two people. But the supporting and understanding of each other that results from shared experiences and emotions does seem to create a powerful bond, which can overcome differences in background, and break down barriers of age, class or race.
生活中，朋友扮演著一個極為重要的角色。然而，我們可能把友誼視為理所當然，通常並不清楚朋友是怎麽結識的。盡管我們與很多人都相處融洽，但真正成為朋友的隻有少數幾個——比如，學生平均每人有六個朋友，其中兩人誌趣相投，相處甚好；除此之外，朋友間的親密程度及誌趣相投的原因大不相同。我們在彼此結識時，常會考慮對方的年齡、種族、經濟條件、社會地位和聰明才智等。盡管這些因素並非特別重要，但當人們在年齡與背景方麵存在太大差異時，往往很難相處。