ICYDK: I no know book o!

© Numero Unoma

The saying goes “Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are”, but how true is that really? 

Well, if many studies are to be believed, the fact is that less intelligent people have more friends. Some interpret that as “having better social lives”, but Satoshia Kanazawa and Norma Li, evolutionary psychologists in the UK, recently vouched for the genius of loners. Their data found that “people who are ‘extremely intelligent’ (like me, lol) are actually happier when they don’t spend time with their friends.” Apparently the more intelligent a person is, the more likely it is that they experience lower life satisfaction with more frequent socialisation with friends. 

That said, in light of the many conflicting opinions on what constitutes ‘high intelligence’, aa well as how many different “kinds” of intelligence there are, psychologists do not agree that the research is extensive enough to draw sweeping conclusions from. One thing is clear though, the people one hangs out with most, do have an effect on one’s habits and by extension, one’s behaviour, character and values. So it might be good idea to ask yourself brutally honestly: Can you justify the people that you hang out with?

It’s incredible how whether we are younger or old, we all know the TV sitcom series ‘Friends’. I speak as one who was an adult when it all began back in 1994. In fact I was already so adult that I had a baby two days after the series was first aired on TV. That same baby of mine is also familiar with the series as a staple throughout her entire life. Most surprising of all though is the fact that many much younger Nigerians are still watching that sickly sweet series about a bunch of Manhattan twenty-something friends, whose ethnic diversity went no further than the inclusion of two sibling white Jewish characters, Monica and Ross Geller, and their other Jewish friend Rachel. 

The characters and storyline in Friends didn’t have to be ‘culturally relevant’ for us to understand such a basic and universally occurring concept as friendship. It is possibly true that a large part of the series’ allure was how successfully it drew a fine line between escapist fantasy and reality, and the characters were endearing with their polarising personalities and quirky social mix. A similar thing could be said of another hugely popular sitcom about a the sex-lives of a group of female friends, again in New York, which ran from 1998 – 2004, namely Sex and the City.

Closer to home, series like ‘Gina and Friends’ or the younger ‘Best Friends in the World’, described as “the Nigerian high school series with some romance but without debauchery and philistinism” have yet to attain the same sort of enduring fame and cult status, but it is lovely to see our own stories and novice series vying for their position among the US veterans. 

Okay, by now you must’ve checked Google or guessed that international day of friendship is this week, on the 30th of July. How does one adequately do a dissection of such a deep and broad concept as friendship? Aristotle believed there were three types, namely friendship of utility, of pleasure and of the good. Driven by utility and pleasure, the first two are more easily broken, or go stale, whereas friendships of the good are rare, and hard to find and develop, as well as mutually very good for our health and wellbeing.

Dutch copyrighter Laura Wabeke made 7 modern and rather casual additions to Aristotle’s insights. She identified the loyal one, the truthful one, the fun one, the wise one, the listener, the flaky one and the bestie. Errrm…if you ask my besties, they will tell you that I am all of those rolled up in one. Other post-modernist categories include things like ‘someone who is the opposite of you’, the work or career friends, or the handy ‘close-by friend’. Let’s not get carried away, though. Less is probably more in this case.

Psychologists broadly agree that good friendships are good for our mental and physical wellbeing and health Apparently, the worst friends to have are frenemies, aka ambivalent relationships, whose insidious toxicity has a dangerous latency, costing mental energy, causing anxiety, and draining emotional energy through one’s constantly trying to second guess if one is liked or not. Studies have shown a link to increased stress, high blood pressure and even rapid ageing – suggesting that “frenemies” are worse still, than enemies.

Anyway a really entertaining way to look at friendship is through the myriad of quotations on the subject. Here are some of my favourites:

Your friend is your needs answered. 

~ Khalil Gibran

For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.

~ Saint Teresa of Avila

A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down. 

~ Arnold H. Glasow 

True friends stab you in the front. 

~ Oscar Wilde 

It takes a long time to grow an old friend. 

~ John Leonard 

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit. 

~ Aristotle 

Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance. 

~ Rabindranath Tagore 

Friends and good manners will carry you where money won’t go. 

~ Margaret Walker 

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow. 

~ Alice Walker 

Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything. 

~ Muhammad Ali 

A friend to all is a friend to none. 

~ Aristotle 

A friend is a gift you give yourself. 

~ Robert Louis Stevenson 

If you have one true friend you have more than your share. 

~ Thomas Fuller 

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. 

~ King Solomon 

A true friend is someone who is there for you when he’d rather be anywhere else. 

~ Len Wein

THIS IS A REALLY UNDERESTIMATED ONE:

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. 

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

NOT EVEN SURPRISED TO READ WHO GAVE US MY MOST SHUNNED ONE, SO AWFULLY PRETENTIOUS AND CYNICAL, UGH!:

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. 

~ Barack Obama

PLEASE BE CAREFUL TO IGNORE OBAMA AND HIS MACHINATIONS!

When you choose your friends, don’t be short-changed by choosing personality over character. 

~ W. Somerset Maugham

My definition of a friend is somebody who adores you even though they know the things you’re most ashamed of. 

~ Jodie Foster

AND NEVER FORGET: 

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. 

~ Henry David Thoreau

The only way to have a friend is to be one. 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson 

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them. 

~ Confucius 

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes. 

~ Friedrich Nietzsche 

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost. 

~ Charles Caleb Colton 

TO SUM IT ALL UP THOUGH, THIS QUOTE BY JOSEPH ROUX:

We call that person who has lost his parents, an orphan; and a widower, that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence. 

A moment of silence for all our friends who have departed too soon. Farewell, dear friends, until we meet again.