Long time back I had defined friendship upon trust. A few years later, I would like to revisit that bit and base it on Value. What I said back then was

“Friendship demands trust. For me trust is the respect that a friend gives me, I value that and I like to give the same in return. For any reason (and generally many) If I fail to see that respect for me and/or I feel I cant give that respect to you, we shall seize to be friends!”

and I still believe in it. However in recent times I have started to realise (thanks to great coaches in my life) that Friendship or any relationship is driven by value. A relationship could simply be adding value to each other on an ongoing basis. And the value may be as simple as making me smile.

So how does the belief change in the light of Value?

“Relationship is driven by value. I gain tangible or intangible value from every relationship that I maintain and my existence in that relationship adds value to the other person as well. If for any reason, I fail to see value for me or my value addition to a relationship or put another way, if for any reason I do not add value to a relationship, perhaps that ship is just dead weight”

One of the reasons may be trust, but it may not always be the factor affecting value.

The choice I now make is to add value to every relationship that I carry. I may not always be able to do so and should I give up on those relationships is something that I haven’t figured.

Probably some other time… I would want to revisit this and align my thoughts.