 Timothy is small for his age, a good student and not at all athletic. Brad, almost a year older and a good thirty pounds heavier, spies him walking by himself and paying no attention. He can't help but see this as an opportunity to put Timothy in his rightful place. He sidles over and gives Tim a good shove, knocking him off his feet. He is rewarded by the puzzled look on Tim's face. He was ready to give the little nobody a good kick for being such a wimp. When two others, Tim's friends, step up beside him, keeping an eye on Brad. They help him to his feet. Brad lets it go with that. He will have to catch Timothy when he is really alone. Brad was a bully and wanted to accomplish something very personal. He wanted to be the one who decided what Timothy would have to do. He wanted to take choices away. When Timothy was in the presence of friends, he was not really alone and Brad's purpose was frustrated. He could not accomplish his purpose at the expense of Timothy. So why do we have friends? The answer is that a person alone can be easily victimized by others. A person who has friends is much less of a target for the bullies of this world. There are always those who would make your decisions for you, directing your time and effort to meet their wants and needs. Some of them can be brutal or demanding. And he wants to dominate and direct Timothy as his purpose. Put the rest in the black box. He acts with violence against Timothy to accomplish what he values. He isn't big enough to bully all three of them at the same time. He fails due to Timothy having friends. All of a sudden he finds that Timothy has resources he hadn't considered. Friendship is an unspecified agreement, a connection recognized by two or more people where they will not sit idly by while their friend is being abused. There is an agreement based on being able to enjoy each other's company. It is found in a loosely shared commitment to that friendship, recognizing it as having value to both of the friends. Friendship is very much a human characteristic and it is most amazing when seen in terms of performance. It has a spiritual aspect where the friends both feel empowered by no longer being alone. In terms of performance, friendship is not a performance relationship. It does not exist to accomplish some performance result. It is not formed because you have something to accomplish through entering into a friend-to-friend relationship. Friendship is not really the result of any value-based investment. There is no valued result to accomplish. It does involve a commitment you will have to make, but your friends will have to make it also. What a friendship does provide as a result of that investment is potency. Friendship provides resources. The person with friends is more potent than the person who is not with friends. They can accomplish things together that they cannot accomplish when acting as independent units. As Brad was quick to note, being with friends raises Tommy's performance potentials, discouraging his bully behavior. In a like way, being a boyfriend and girlfriend together has social potentials that exceed those of being a girl or a boy who is not recognized as a couple. It involves a level of shared commitment and results in a social potency not granted to either of them as individuals. For you as teenagers, friendship is generally a choice, an option that comes available through your commitment of time and effort based upon choices by potential friends of their time and effort. It is a choice in both personal commitment and your expected results from making that commitment. As in most such things, the more you put into being a friend to someone else, the more it encourages them to be your friend. The more valuable their friendship becomes to you, the more likely they are to find value in yours. It still has to be mutual to be effective, but it is almost always a possibility. As you are still growing and changing, your friendship will tend to be temporary and your commitment may not yield long-term benefits. But then your time and energy are high and you are the decision makers who choose where you will act. For performance, your teenage years are a time of learning. Performance starts with purpose and there is potential purpose in having friends of all types. You may not see clearly what the result will be from making friends, but this is a time of learning. You will look at the options available at the time and effort you would commit to direction of this development, then you can expend or withhold your effort as seems best to you. These are your decisions to make.