[00:00.00]Lesson Ten Text
[00:04.49]On Friendship Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metranx
[00:12.54]Few Americans stay put for a lifetime.
[00:17.50]We move from town to city to suburb,
[00:22.26]from high school to college in a different state,
[00:26.93]from a job in one region to a better job elsewhere,
[00:32.68]from the home where we raise our children
[00:37.15]to the home where we plan to live in retirement.
[00:42.29]With each move we are forever making new friends,
[00:47.86]who become part of our new life at that time.
[00:52.61]For many of us the summer is a special time for forming new friendships.
[00:59.45]Today millions of Americans vacation abroad,
[01:04.71]and they go not only to see new sights but also
[01:10.58]in those places where they do not feel too strange
[01:15.83]with the hope of meeting new people.
[01:19.88]No one really expects a vacation trip to produce a close friend.
[01:25.94]But surely the beginning of a friendship is possible?
[01:31.82]Surely in every country people value friendship?
[01:37.28]They do.The difficulty when strangers from two countries meet
[01:43.44]is not a lack of appreciation of friendship,
[01:48.12]but different expectations about what constitutes friendship
[01:54.18]and how it comes into being.
[01:57.63]In those European countries that Americans are most likely to visit,
[02:03.69]friendship is quite sharply distinguished from other,
[02:08.55]more casual relations,and is differently related to family life.
[02:15.21]For a Frenchman, a German or an Englishman friendship is usually more special
[02:23.46]and carries a heavier burden of commitment.
[02:29.03]But as we use the word, "friend" can be applied to a wide range of relationships
[02:36.79]to someone one has known for a few weeks in a new place,
[02:42.43]to a close business associate, to a childhood playmate,
[02:49.20]to a man or woman,to a trusted confidant.
[02:54.52]There are real differences among these relations for Americans
[03:00.19]a friendship may be superficial, casual, situational or deep and enduring.
[03:08.94]But to a European,who sees only our surface behavior,
[03:15.50]the differences are not clear.
[03:19.86]As they see it, people known and accepted temporarily,casually,
[03:26.84]flow in and out of Americans' homes with little ceremony
[03:31.88]and often with little personal commitment.
[03:36.56]They may be parents of the children's friends house guests of neighbors,
[03:43.01]members of a committee business associates from another town
[03:49.46]or even another country.
[03:53.43]Coming as a guest into an American home,
[03:57.98]the European visitor finds no visible landmarks.
[04:03.54]The atmosphere is relaxed.
[04:07.61]Most people, old and young, are called by first names.
[04:13.57]Who then is a friend?
[04:17.23]Even simple translation from one language to another is difficult.
[04:24.39]"You see," a Frenchman explains,
[04:28.64]"if I were to say to you in France,'This is my good friend,'
[04:35.49]that person would not be as close to me as someone about whom I said only,
[04:43.53]'This is my friend.' Anyone about whom I have to say more is really less."
[04:53.20]In France, as in many European countries,
[04:58.16]friends generally are of the same sex,
[05:02.71]and friendship is seen as basically a relationship between men.
[05:08.87]Frenchwomen laugh at the idea that "women can't be friends,"
[05:16.24]but they also admit sometimes that for women "it's a different thing."
[05:23.50]And many French people doubt the possibility of a friendship between a man
[05:30.48]and a woman.
[05:33.43]There is also the kind of relationship within a group
[05:38.57]men and women who have worked together for a long time,
[05:44.22]who may be very close,sharing great loyalty and warmth of feeling.
[05:50.67]They may call one another copainsa word that in English becomes "friends"
[05:59.63]but has more the feeling of "pals" or "buddies".
[06:06.00]In French eyes this is not friendship,
[06:10.44]although two members of such a group may well be friends.
[06:17.21]For the French,friendship is a one-to-one relationship
[06:23.76]that demands a keen awareness of the other person's intellect,
[06:29.83]temperament and particular interests.
[06:34.27]A friend is someone who draws out your own best qualities,
[06:40.33]with whom you sparkle and become more of whatever the friendship draws upon.
[06:47.48]Your political philosophy assumes muoe depth,
[06:52.53]appreciation of a play becomes sharper,
[06:57.67]taste in food or wine is enhanced,enjoyment of a sport is intensified.
[07:06.21]And French friendships are divided into categories.
[07:12.59]A man may play chess with a friend for thirty years
[07:18.52]without knowing his political opinion,
[07:22.88]or he may talk politics with him for as long a time
[07:28.21]without knowing about his personal life.
[07:32.86]Different friends fill different niches in each person's life.
[07:40.02]These friendships are not made part of family life.
[07:45.48]A friend is not expected to spend evenings being nice to
[07:50.94]children or courteous to a deaf grandmother.
[07:55.69]These duties, also serious and required, are primarily for relatives.
[08:03.34]Men who are friends may meet in a cafe.
[08:08.07]Intellectual friends may meet in larger groups for evenings of conversation.
[08:15.05]Working people may meet at the little bistro where they drink and talk,
[08:22.20]far from the family.
[08:25.97]Marriage does not affect such friendships;
[08:30.62]wives do not have to be taken into account.
[08:35.16]In the past in France,
[08:38.82]friendships of this kind seldom were open to any but intellectual women.
[08:45.58]Since most women's lives centered on their homes,
[08:50.55]their warmest relations with other women often went back to their girlhood.
[08:57.31]The special relationship of friendship
[09:01.68]is based on what the French value most on the mind,
[09:07.03]on having the same of outlook,
[09:11.47]on vivid awareness of some chosen area of life.
[09:17.35]In Germany,icontrast with France,
[09:22.81]friendship is much more clearly a matter of feeling.
[09:28.45]Adolescents, boys and girls, form deeply sentimental attachments,
[09:35.01]walk and talk together
[09:38.56]not so much to polish their wits as to share their hopes and fears and dreams
[09:45.82]to form a common front against the world of school
[09:51.75]and familyand to join in a kind of mutual discovery of each other's
[09:58.28]and their own inner life.
[10:01.84]Within the family,
[10:04.89]the closest relationship over a lifetime is between brothers and sisters.
[10:11.74]Outside the family,
[10:15.08]men and women find in their closest friends of the same sex
[10:21.56]the devotion of a sister,the loyalty of a brother.
[10:27.20]Appropriately, in Germany friends usually are brought into the family.
[10:34.65]Children call their father's and their mother's friends "uncle" and "aunt".
[10:41.41]Between French friends,
[10:45.17]who have chosen each other for the similarity of their point of view,
[10:51.10]lively disagreement and sharpness of argument are the breath of life.
[10:58.47]But for Germans, whose friendships are based on common feelings,
[11:04.82]deep disagreement on any subject that matters to both is regarded as a tragedy.
[11:13.07]Like ties of kinship, ties of friendship are meant to be absolutely binding.
[11:20.73]Young Germans who come to the United States
[11:25.37]have great difficulty in establishing such friendships with Americans.
[11:32.04]We view friendship more tentatively,
[11:36.29]subject to changes in intensity as people move,
[11:42.07]change their jobs, marry,or discover new interests.
[11:48.13]English friendships follow still a different pattern.
[11:53.27]Their basis is shared activity.
[11:58.24]Activities at different stages of life
[12:03.20]may be of very different kinds discovering a common interest in school,
[12:10.57]serving together in the armed forces,taking part in a foreign mission,
[12:17.41]staying in the same country house during a crisis.
[12:21.98]In the midst of the activity, whatever it may be,
[12:27.31]people fall into step sometimes two men or two women,
[12:33.68]sometimes two couples, sometimes three people
[12:38.65]and find that they walk or play a game or tell stories
[12:44.60]or serve on a committee with the same easy anticipation
[12:50.95]of what each will do day by dayor in some critical situation.
[12:58.19]Americans who have made English friends comment that, even years later,
[13:04.82]"you can take up just where you left off."
[13:09.55]Meeting after a long interval,
[13:14.02]friends are like a couple who begin to dance again
[13:19.06]when the orchestra strikes up after a pause.
[13:24.10]English friendships are formed outside the family circle,
[13:29.77]but they are not,as in Germany,
[13:33.71]committed to the family nor are they, as in France,separated from the family.
[13:41.37]And a break in an English friendship
[13:45.81]comes not necessarily as a result of some difference of viewpoint or feeling
[13:53.57]but instead as a result of misjudgment,
[13:58.61]where one friend seriously misjudges how the other will think or feel or act,
[14:05.98]so that suddenly they are out of step.
[14:10.70]What,then,is friendship?
[14:14.36]Looking at these different styles, including our own,
[14:19.82]each of which is related to a whole way of life, are there common elements?
[14:27.08]There is the recognition that friendships are formed,
[14:33.04]in contrast with kinship,through freedom of choice.
[14:38.99]A friend is someone who chooses and is chosen.
[14:44.27]Related to this is the sense each friend gives the other
[14:50.51]of being a special individual,on whatever grounds this recognition is based.
[14:58.06]And between friends there is inevitably a kind of equality of give and take.
[15:05.72]These similarities make the bridge between societies possible,
[15:12.80]and the American's characteristic openness to different styles of relationship
[15:19.88]makes it possible for him to find new friends abroad with whom he feels at home. |