Created by Jeenn Lee Hsieh
谢振礼老师海外投稿
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What do you want most in a friend? Someone who is intelligent, or someone who has a sense of humor, or someone who is reliable? Which of these characteristics is most important to you? Use reasons and specific examples to explain your choice.
Mistrust is said to be poison to friendship, and it does not matter whether a friend is intelligent or has a sense of humor. Real friendship must be built on mutual reliability more than any other quality. Of course, it is all the better to have a reliable friend who happens to be brainy and/or funny.
A friend who is intelligent is desirable but not indispensable. In times of need, most likely an intelligent person walks out while a reliable one walks in. A fair-weather friend may go so far as enlighten a troubled mind, short of saving a poor soul from the agony of desperate need. As such, intelligence is a virtue in itself with nothing to do with what is known as true friendship. It is no-brainer when it comes to choosing a life-long friend between the one who is intelligent and the other who is trust-worthy. Safety first, after all.
Humor may be one of the best medicines in life, and yet it does little to cure the feeling of mistrust. The company of a friend with a good sense of humor may be enjoyable as long as such fun doest not turn out to be bitterly ironic. True enough, humor is always as humor does because it is like salt and pepper to a boring, sometimes stressful life. In contrast, reliability is like spiritual food on which real friendship so much depend to see an honest world. Although a friend with a sense of humor is a a joy, actually only a friend who is reliable can double that kind of joy or cut grief in half.
Being intelligent or humorous could be an advantage in a friend, but only a reliable friend is a friend in need and indeed. Thus,what really contributes to long-lasting friendship is reliability. No surprise that it often takes years to build up friendship, only to be destroyed in seconds when a friend is found guilty of dishonesty.
