On friendship

Laugh and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone.

 -Ella Wheeler in the poem "Solitude" (1883)

While this is a famous line that makes sense at a superficial level, my experience in life has taught me that this isn't true. When you want to complain about how things aren't going well and are generally negative, you'll find many people who will commiserate with you and allow you to vent. They might themselves vent to give you company. I find that people generally tend to be tolerant and sympathetic of the misery around them. This is somehow especially true in academia. People love to complain, and people love being in the company of those who complain. I myself got into such loops but have worked actively on myself to get out of such negativity cycles and focus on the positives. I have more work to do on this front still, but I am happy with the steps I've taken to achieve this. 

Your "friends" are not your friends if they will not be genuinely happy for you when you share the good things that are happening in your life. This, of course, is not some great deep insight that is unknown to people. I just think we don't pay attention to this aspect enough in our daily lives. 

I've come to the conclusion that Ella Wheeler's lines do not make much sense in the real world. It works quite well if you flip it around. There are deeper reasons for this, and they can be found across the animal kingdom. Let these capuchin monkeys illustrate the point to you. The way people perceive what you share, therefore, also depends very much on what they themselves are going through in life (i.e., using the capuchin monkey analogy, have they been eating cucumber in isolation or grapes?). You will, however, find a rare person or two in your life who will be genuinely happy for you when things are going well in your life. Find them, and hold on to them. 

I myself have had only two best friends in life, and not concurrently. The other thing with genuine friends is that they are not afraid to critique each other. These friends of mine and I have corrected each other many times without any ego issues coming in between us. Even at my workplace, there are a few people who are secure enough to take criticism from me without taking personal offense. They have also felt free to critique me and my work. One example that is paraphrased: "Vishnu, you are not demanding a high enough quality in this work of yours; you need to do better with those students because you're setting a bad example for other students by doing this," and I've thanked them for the very useful perspective. I keep going back to them for advice because I know they'll be honest with me when giving me feedback. On the other hand, I've invited trouble from others, having said much less. Again, no fault of anyone's, just different lives, different situations, but it is good to develop such awareness when interacting with people.

So, who is a good friend? "Who is that one person you pick up the phone to call when you are sad and miserable?" -- this is often posed as a useful way to determine who that friend is. I would suggest this instead: "Who is that one person you would pick up the phone to call if you achieved something significant or won the lottery?" Insert whatever positive outcome of your choice into that question -- this is your real friend.