Trust, Confidentiality, and Consistency

Another way of the good friend is they reveal their confidences to you. What they carry deeply in terms of pain, aspiration, regret or joy, they reveal to you.

This is precious, this act of trust whereby a person can reveal what is difficult or sensitive for them. When that can occur your sense of friendship grows beyond just liking someone; you have been given their trust. And you must never betray that.

Similarly, a good friend doesn’t betray your trust by divulging what you have shared with them in confidence. They regard your trust and your willingness to confide as precious – and that gives value to your life. You are someone who is held with respect – even if what was shared were problems or dark experiences. It isn’t the content that is valued, but the honesty and sharing. So you preserve that.

This confidentiality is something to cultivate because we can delight in gossip, with its sense of having special information on someone, particularly if it’s juicy. But something precious is lost in that gossip and chatter: human life is cheapened into fleeting entertainment. And if I don’t want people to gossip about me, then I won’t gossip about others.

The good friend also doesn’t abandon you when you’re in misfortune, hard-up, or when your luck runs out. When you feel like giving up on your aims and aspirations, they don’t give up on you.

And finally, the last quality of the good friend is that when you really lose it, when you’re totally down and out, they don’t despise you.

This reflection by Ajahn Sucitto is from the article, “The Good Friend.”