Friendship is about play Not power

 Power is a solitary thing. Power is the ability to choose. The ability to discern and choose what both is and isn't good for me.Power requires me to have my eyes and feet and hands and voice. Without those things fully functional with friends as a substitute, then I would have joined a bunch of people who can't see who were crashing in a destination to nowhere. 

I don't know what that actually is but I know that's not friendship. 

Organization and structure is a good thing. But a structure has to respect the potential of an autonomous human being to remain alone if he or she should choose to be alone to be fully functional. Society is also better with meta structures that nurture people's right to be alone. 

Friends are better friends if they want to be, not if they have to be. 

No friends of mine would try to groom me or my daughter away from her sense of family and safety. 

Some people did try some of these things who thought they were doing the right thing, even though they weren't. Most of the time evil isn't done for the sake of evil. Evil tends to thrive on the best of intentions and a sense of tiredness. 

If one got close to any hurricane a person would likely find a normal human being dealing with energies far larger than him or herself. Often what you thought was their doing was just them seeing a very large problem and managing that the best they can. 

That implies something that most people don't often want to admit. Most evil energies are impersonal, mechanical, and can't be traced to any one person or god because they aren't. The evil is just random, purposeless and meaningless with counter energies provided by gods and human beings to keep that in check or to guide the energies in a constructive way for the sake of preserving life. 

But that's not what life is about. So much defensiveness created a sense of false purpose. Life at it's best isn't about keeping bad things from happening, but is about grateful abundance. 

The sense of strength that comes from keeping bad things from happening kept some people from seeing how meaningless all the bad things were. 

But good things are meaningless in a positive way. A good thing is a good thing in a moment. A good friend and a good memory is something a person can take with them forever to remind them what life is about. 

The meaningless goodness is what keeps the meaningless bad in perspective. That's the benefit of when I decided to not have any friends for a while and just focus on what life itself has to offer. 

That lesson provided me with the clear lesson that unless I had fun to offer friends that I could just as easily be at peace without them, then power and friendship are harmonious. 

I remember when  I was a kid I couldn't wait to spend the night at a friends house, watch movies and play football and eat food all night. For no other reason except to enjoy their company. When the play was done I still had to go back to my pain. When I was around them I felt the loneliness of not being able to share that pain. But I also had the great pleasure of not making my whole life about pain. 

I couldn't share what I was going through because I just had the intuition that my friends were going through stuff too with pain of their own. Perhaps the pain was not having parents that could protect us. Some of what Jordan Peterson says about pain being purposeful feels stupid to me when I remember those memories. I could just as easily had those lessons if my parental structure were stronger and more reliable to protect against the abuse of others. Respect doesn't require pain. It only requires awareness of other people's experiences and that there's a time and place for things. When I was with my friends it was the time to play, not the time to cry. No amount of sympathy could change the fact that most of the land I was in was filled with nothing like a great large desert. Sympathetic friends don't change things unless I'm empowered to do things for myself already.

Play was the best though. We'd play pretend or we'd go to amusement parks or just have coffee or eat nice things. We'd laugh with each other and look forward to hanging out.

Adults can learn from that. Friendship can include support, but friendship isn't about support. Friendship is about play and natural bonding that allows people to love and support each other not because they have to, but because they want to.