Friendships I

　　在美国，友谊难寻已成为一种普遍现象。专家们认为这也许是因为一些美国人骨子里没有耐心造成的；而在中国，友谊难得，似乎也已成为一种“流行”，每个人只忙于自己的事，对别人，脸上更多的是冷漠，这难道是社会发展的一种必然？

　　A high school history teacher once told us, "If you make one close friend in school, you will be most fortu nate. A true friend is someone who stays with you for l ife." Experience teaches that he was right. Good friend ships are just not easily formed. Why?

　　One reason may relate to the mobility in our societ y. Mr Darrell Sifford, a news columnist for the Philade lphia Inquirer, has been studying and talking about fri endship for a number of years. He reports the thoughts of one woman on this aspect of friendship:

　　"I was nine, and we'd just been transferred from So uth Carolina to New Jersey, and I didn't know anybody. My stepmother had a way of getting to the root of thing s and she said to me , 'Amelia, I know you're feeling b ad because you don't have any friends. But you can fix that. Just walk across the street—I know there's a girl about your age over there—and knock on the door and ask her to be your friend.' As a 9-year-old, I could do tha t. I knocked on the door and said, 'Hi, my name is Amel ia, and I'd like for us to be friends.' And to my surpr ise, she said that she would like that too—and we becam e friends."

　　She added that that direct approach always worked w hen she was a child. But as she left childhood, she fou nd that the simple direct approach was more and more di fficult for her to follow. So, as an adult, Amelia long ed to have friends but her hands were tied when it came to doing anything about it. The problem, according to h er, is that society teaches us in a number of ways that direct action is not acceptable behavior. We need to be less direct to cushion ourselves against possible rejec tion and the fright of exposing our own helplessness.