Friendship: Meanings and Entanglements in a Group of Adolescents

Abstract

This paper shows a series of reflections on the meanings of friendship in a group of adolescents. In adolescence, friendly relationships begin to be forged, when they discover the importance of the friend in their lives, equally for the pleasure of their company and for the challenges they represent. Thus, the objective of this study is to explore the entanglements of meanings that gravitate in adolescents when they talk about their friends, what importance they attach to it and what challenges friendship represents for them. To discuss this matter, and to know its meanings and evaluations, the art of deliberation was put into play with seven discussion groups in preparatory schools of the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. The intention is not to make a speculative dissertation about friendship, but the aim is focused on knowing how, according to their experiences, it translates into concrete experiences, which are shaping their conceptions about it. From their reflections we find: 1) that friendship is part of the ethos of their lives and is something desirable because it provides them, in real and symbolic terms, a happier life; 2) that having a true friend is having the gift of counting on someone, with whom a loyal and disinterested affective bond is freely established; 3) In addition to having rewarding experiences with friends, finding meaning in many of the things that they deal with in the world, and helps them shape their moral character.