Good friends are hard to find...

and hard to lose...

Years ago, if you asked me what I thought was the very definition of a good friend I would tell you that a good friend is someone you always spend time with, alway hang out with and do everything together with. Today, if you asked me if my definition would be the same as then I would say yes...and no. For while choosing to spend your leisure time with someone helps to keep them friendly, being a friend, to me anyways, now means more than just that. My definition of a friend is that they are anyone who you implicitly trust and feel you can talk to about anyone now. The term best friend no longer seems to have any meaning for me anymore because it seems to imply favourtism, yet a good friend is someone whose company you still value. Ask most people and they may tell you that a good friend is someone who is there for you whenever you're down to help you up. That a good friend will be with you when you fall or when times are hard. Not only that, but a good friend will not betray your trust or values and will not be afraid to let you know when you've betrayed yours or are about to.

I've recently taken part in a discussion about community and what, exactly, it is. Simply put, it is a group of people interacting with each other. But within the group are various levels to which they do that. On the first level, everyone is on the surface; nobody is familiar enough with anyone else to talk about much else than current events or, well, the weather. But as the group spends more and more time together it begins to laterally change dramatically as they become more familiar. Yes, I said laterally; whether it is for better or for worse is subjective depending on each member of the group. The group may become closer to itself, it may grow further away from each other (eventually dissolving the group itself), or it can fracture.
A group that grows closer will know its members on a level nobody outside the group may, thus allowing communication to become easier.
When a group grows further away from each other it can be because of various reasons. The most popular reason in the discussion I was part of was a lack of communication. Failure to communicate with other members starts to become more acceptable until the group no longer functions. Yet members can have great communication with each other yet still grow further apart because of even miscommunication, disloyalty, anger, and other negative qualities that can get introduced into the group.
The qualities mentioned above may not dissolve a group entirely though, as the nature of them still bears impact on what they can do. That is why some groups can fracture. That is, break into several smaller groups or have a small number of members leave the group. While this can happen for the aforementioned reasons, one reason I've found to be popular is a disagreement between parties. Sometimes the group has trouble deciding on a certain situation because it is divided on how it should handle it. When one camp, usually the more dominant/populated one makes the ultimate decision for the group that other camps don't agree with, it can sometimes be enough to make the camps leave.
By why leave a group?
The primary purpose of a group, no matter what it stands for, is to accomplish its goals together. Yet if these goals are no longer shared by the members they will inevitably leave. The question for these parties then isn't why leave, but why stay.

..and hard to lose...

Continuing on, a good friend I believe should be someone who is very hard to lose. Good friends for me take time to get to know because it isn't until you really know them that you will be able to determine whether or not they are actually friends. I've met many people who seem very nice and dependable to you yet when you get to know them more you see how hard it would be to know them at all. Yet having a good friend isn't something that's one way. One must work to keep them. If someone has been a good friend to you and then suddenly stops acting that way towards you it may not be that they were never a good friend. Good friends choose their good friends. It may also be that you were never a good friend back to them.
I believe that a good friend is hard to lose because not only have they worked hard to earn your trust, but you have also worked hard to earn theirs. Thus, if you are in trouble, they will not disassociate themselves with you for fear of guilt by association. They will still choose to be associate with you, even though it may hurt them. They also exhibit a degree of patience towards you if you've ever wronged them. But eventually even a good friend's patience has its limits. If it's been tried too often a friend may no longer look to you as someone they can trust and depend on. And if you've lost a good friend you can be sure that it took a long time to do so. Good friends are to be cherished, loved, and kept at all costs. For once a good friendship has been shattered, there is no recovery. If a good friendship has ended one or both of the friends will forever carry with them the hurt caused by the other.
I'm not talking about fights between friends about personal matters. I'm not talking about arguments about jealousy or hate or love. I speak of the gradual, subtle hurts that can build up until patience is lost. The longer a friendship is invested in, the long it will take for it to dissolve. After that it will never be the same.