Growth

What is it to be friends?  What is it to help them grow?  How do you help someone grow?  This is the challenge I undertake everyday in my life with myself and others around me.

What is it to be friends?

For me this is an elusive term.  I've never treated this word like any other. For me it is more transient. I feel friendship is like two planets orbiting around each other. Each drawing in the other with their magnetic gravitational pull.
When they are close, they draw each other in, comfort each other with their presence, and influence each other in remarkable ways.
When they are further apart, they have less impact on each others lives.  I think we are always in a flux between states with our friends and love ones.
There is always this changing state the way I feel with my friends.  That is why I have a hard time pin pointing what the word "friendship" is at any given time.  Sometimes I feel like an acquaintance, others a best friend, and everything else in-between.  It depends on how close I feel to them and how close I feel they are to me.

What is it to help someone grow?

I've always found that in my life I grow best when I'm uncomfortable.  When I'm in an unfamiliar situation or something new to me I do not fully understand.  When I'm uncomfortable my mind is more open, I seek out others perspectives and ways of seeing the world.
Getting into this state can be challenging or it can be very easy, depending on if you seeks it.  I find, ever more this state of unbalance in my situations helps me learn faster, helps me make better long term decisions, and overall makes me a better person.
This is why it is my goal as a friend to help my friends get into these uncomfortable positions in life.  I find more often than not, I cross the line and end up going just over this invisible barrier between comfort and uncomfortably.

I seek out this state with my friends, always re-updating myself with where they are at.  I seek to know them, to comfort them, and to help them grow by putting them in places they feel uncomfortable.  I only find out what others feel is uncomfortable by being with them in many situations, and being observant to how that situation makes them feel. This is different for everyone.

I have found this true in my own life.