Admiration, Qualities of Friends and Controversial Views

“To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind” - Theophile Giautier

Love is necessary for the human beings to survive in this world. Just as ethics of care states, love and care is really important for a healthy lifestyle. This love comes in various forms, a mother loves her child, siblings and friends love each other. They care for each other and one starts feeling a bondage towards the other person. Their needs become other’s responsibilities. Burning out oneself for the wishes of others is when you realize that you really care for a person.

In family these feeling of care and love are natural as they are blood relations but there are people we care for sometimes more than ourselves though they don’t belong to our family such as friends and people we admire or are influenced by. The force that drives us to do this is love but why does we love them has various reasons. What clicks in friends is compatibility, nature, kindness and their behavior with us. In such relations, views differ because not everyone is from same background. Even family brought up matters a lot in your viewpoint about certain issues.

If bond between two friends is strong enough then this difference of views doesn’t come between your friendships. For instance. My class is of different opinion about army. Our one friend gets offended if someone badmouth army. One of us is not a supporter of army's interference in everything, but this doesn't matter when it comes to other things. That person has a good heart, is kind, helping, caring and there is a bond between us that cannot be damaged by a difference of opinion. The virtues matter the most not the opinion, actions speaks louder than the words. No one is perfect, everyone has good and bad traits.

“Blessed is he who has learned to admire but not envy, to follow but not imitate, to praise but not flatter, and to lead but not manipulate. ” - William Arthur Ward

What is admiration? It is a feeling of respect and approval. It is a way of praising others for their extra ordinary set skill. It is a social emotion that facilitates learning in groups. Sara Algoe and Jonathan Haidt have put forward admiration as a part of other praising emotions. Most people confuse their feelings of envy with admiration but it should be made clear that envy makes us feel depressed about the success of others and is a negative emotion while admiration is uplifting and motivating and is a positive feelings Human beings by nature want love, care, and attention. Some qualities like honesty and truthfulness attract us and leads us to admire other person. At times, this admiration gains such heights that we even overlook their mistakes, bad habits.

One thing that people are most temperamental about, is their viewpoint and they don’t tolerate any sort of criticism even if it is coming from their closest friends. Many times it happens that the people we admire the most have really controversial views about sensitive matters. In event of such disagreement, if our relationship and bond with that person is much more in our mind and heart we don’t pay attention to their controversial views. We consider their views as their own personal opinion and it doesn’t affect our relation. There is a friend of ours who is really kind and of really nice nature. She has a good heart and does a lot of charity work. We have been a part of a number of things together and have always found her cooperative and determined. She is passionate about her field that is inspiring for us. She also has a number of other virtues but she is of the opinion that there is nothing wrong in using pirated softwares. Being the students of software engineering we know how much time and effort is spent on developing a software. We cannot support piracy of softwares, it is almost equivalent to stealing. Professionals work day and night to develop a good software. Since she is a really good person overall we still like her even we disagree with her about this matter. We all have heard about a famous idiom “Never judge a book by it is cover”.

Many times in our lives we come across people who judge others by their appearance and hold prejudice against them. We came across a person who was of the view that girls should not be allowed to leave home and they should wear abaya or a hijab when moving outside the house. Contrary, to that we think that it’s not only the appearance of a person which defines them. One may not wear an abaya and yet be a respectful lady and move in society while safeguarding the honor of her family. This should not be the criterion for judging a women’s character. Even this person has controversial views in this regard yet we admire him because he is truthful, honest and a caring person. He is helpful and understanding as well. One feels at ease with such a person with whom one is compatible. These qualities compel us to admire this person though he has a controversial view.

As I converse with my friends one topic on which most of them expressed different view is Suicide. Have you ever wondered that why do people attempt suicide? Suicide being one of the controversial issue as it leaves people with questions about why that particular person took this extreme step. The thing we came across during this topic was that a friend of mine believed it to be a psychological issue and we thought it to be a lack of faith in God (ALLAH). Her point of view was that a person who gets overwhelmed with depression will definitely loose his senses and take this step. This is mostly taken as psychological issue which must be treated and taken care of. On the other hand, we believed that this dreadful step is taken by those who have lost faith in God, and take their destiny in their own hands. Moreover, we also think that they themselves are responsible for dragging their mental state to extent where they have become so called psycho. However, we can’t blame her on this view because this doesn’t hurt our self-esteem nor it causes harm to us in any way. The main thing we admire about her is her caring nature and honesty towards us. Moreover, we have strong communication with her, as she always helps people in boasting up their confidence. Her quality of bringing smiles in her friend’s lives overcome few controversial views she has.

Conclusion

Admiration is a social emotion and helps to motivate people for a group learning. We do conclude that admiration does not depend on some views. A person might have a different opinion about a controversial or sensitive issue but they might still be your good friends and they might have some qualities that you admire. But it should be kept in mind that, you should not stray away from your outlook of life just by coming under the influence of the person you admire. You must maintain your sense of right and wrong. However, your views should not be harmful for others and difference of opinion even on controversial issues must be respected.