Selfishness in friendship through high school and beyond

By Srija Srinivasan| Staff Writer

Humans are machines who are built to achieve the maximum efficiency possible. Because it’s easier to be selfish and not help others  than it is to be a positive, upstanding citizen, people are generally more bad than good. Generally, the concepts of good and bad are completely gray areas because they mean different things to everyone. But when it’s so much easier to hurt others than it is to help them, we are all at the very core of our nature, evil.

Regardless of our selfish tendencies, we still can not function alone. Most human beings seek companionship in some way. But oftentimes, the reason we attempt to befriend others, whether we know it or not, is out of selfishness. We use our friends for fun, for comfort, security, and help. While these feelings and favors are usually reciprocated amongst friends, we often selfishly desire to use our friends as much as we can. We want others to want to help us, but we would much rather be helped than help others. We all idealistically call each other “Best Friends Forever” and expect to maintain lifelong relationships between several people who will inevitably drift away from us. But in high school, everything is so fleeting. What’s the point in making friends with other people when we are all bound to part ways? We will become nothing but faint memories in the minds of people who were at one point in our lives the only way we could to get through each day.

Even now we’ve all seemed to drift away from friends we had in elementary and middle school. We will all become driven away from one another at some point in the near future, left to be nothing but memories on our mother’s tongues. “How’s so and so doing? You haven’t spent time with them in a while, huh?” If it is nothing but greed and malice driving all individuals, won’t all friendships be set up for failure?

The majority of our student body will graduate high school sometime within the next four years. After that, all individuals will choose a next step, whether it is continuing to a four year college, a community college, a military service, or taking a few years off from all of the stress they’ve dealt with throughout 12-13 years of their mandated school education. Maintaining healthy relationships with peers must add to the day to day pressure associated with attending school.

Yet, it seems to be the only thing that can relieve stress between periods during break, between weeks on the weekends, and between years in the summer. With classwork and homework and tests and quizzes all adding pressure to each and every student, maybe the best way to get through it all is to have a friend who understands exactly what you are going through.