" F r i e n d s h i p "

Kevin Donkor

2005

It is 11:00 A.M. on Saturday morning and I am walking toward the Crotona Center, an enrichment program for boys and young men located in the Bronx. As I enter the center, I see a wide smile from John Riccobono. As usual, he shakes my hand and greets me. John is the Director of the Center but I see him more as a friend. As a seventh grader, before I started coming to Crotona, I had two main priorities: getting high grades and being liked by my peers. These are good things but there are other good things to strive for as well which can be more important. True friendship was not a main priority for me. The Crotona Center seeks to help boys to reach their full potential in school and life through after school, weekend and summer programs, such as academic tutoring and professional mentoring. Through these programs, I have discovered how important developing true friendship is.

In grammar school, I sought good grades and the attention of my classmates more than developing true friendship. To be honest, I didn’t really know what it is. I practiced certain virtues or good habits to attain good grades like study and diligence without recognizing what their real purposes are. In my mind, study was just a tool or means to get good grades. When I did not always get good marks or feel accepted by my peers, I was depressed. I acted silly in class to make others laugh, not as a service to them but to satisfy my desire to feel good. Not only was my purpose for being silly wrong but the means I used to feel better about myself were poor, shallow actions based on an ephemeral feeling. At best, I had a few acquaintances with whom I superficially expressed affection. Since true friendship was not a main priority in seventh grade, I did not spend time developing it.

John and my friends at Crotona create a familial environment in which I experience friendship. In this environment I have learned that friendship is a relationship between people that is grounded on truth, love and respect for personal freedom. I’d like to briefly address each of these aspects of friendship because each holds a specific meaning for me.

Through Crotona’s activities, my fellow students and I have learned that we can only love what we know. And, in this sense, friendship is based first on the truth of myself, including my defects, weakness and talents as well as on the essential truths of various real things. For example, I suppose just like everyone else that I don’t like being corrected. But friends try to help each other, which includes correction. My friendship with another Crotona student, Brian, has helped me accept correction. During the beginning of the school year, I practiced SAT topics with Brian. When I answered a question incorrectly, he would point out my error. After many of these, which in my mind made me look bad, I would get upset. But after awhile I realized that I’ll do better on the SAT because he cares enough about me to help me achieve a greater good than a momentary feeling of intellectual competency. I am now more comfortable engaging other people rather than staying at a distance afraid that they will see my weaknesses.

From a deeper understanding of others and things in the world, I can now truly enjoy the good in each of them since only something true can be good. And the highest degree of enjoyment of the good is called love. For example, now I try to understand my friends as they really are and not how I want them to be. The more I understand my friends, the more I appreciate the good in them. Last year, I didn’t really know Brian and as a result we weren’t friends. However, I got to know him better over the past summer. I experienced his likes and dislikes, and most importantly we discovered our common good—to be trustworthy men who seek to give of themselves. There were some moments in this friendship that seemed magical. I felt blessed when we didn’t worry about how we looked but simply shared in ordinary good activity. Striving to be virtuous along with other people seems to make life more enjoyable and draws out from each one greater expressions of human dignity. I guess that is what I felt. Before, I used to make bad judgments about people because I didn’t try to get to know them well. I was afraid of getting to know others because I assumed they didn’t want to be known just as I didn’t want others to know my weaknesses.

Through many shared activities with my peers at Crotona, I have experienced that friendship is generated between people when they communicate themselves to each other—they expose who they really are to each other, seeing a likeness with each other. And in doing so, they establish a certain unity between themselves through a truth jointly held and a common good. In Crotona’s Leadership Club, we strive to be leaders, reliable men of strong character. I wouldn’t be able to reveal myself to another person if I didn’t love myself first, because if I don’t love myself I judge myself not worthy of giving and as unlovable. Crotona helps us to see in daily life many opportunities to be leaders who try to show others that they are lovable so that they can give themselves to others in return. One small example was just last month at school in which I was deeply upset from losing a textbook. I was mad at myself and afraid of my mother’s reaction, and as a consequence, I was in a very bad mood. But as I turned a corner, I saw a classmate and quickly smiled at him. When I thought about it, I realized that I had immediately dropped my bad mood and was happy. Then I remembered that the Crotona staff always tell us that the “secret” of happiness is to focus on the needs and good of others.

Friends want what is best for each other, and as a Catholic I want to share, especially with my Catholic friends, the full meaning of friendship. In terms of my faith, this deeper appreciation of what friendship is gives more meaning to my daily conversation with God. And, I now better appreciate the personal freedom of others. From my daily examination of conscience, which I learned to do at Crotona and in which I see how I can live the next day as a better man, I see more clearly all my weaknesses and that despite these, God loves me. He doesn’t force me to do good, which is obvious since I give in to my weaknesses. Since God treats me this way, I likewise try to respect others’ personal freedom. Respecting a person’s freedom is essential to generate authentic friendship with him.

I would like to thank John who for me has embodied friendship through his example. He is truly interested in people. He does not make fun of others, he respects a person’s freedom and is willing to help people outside of work. I now strive to be a leader, a true friend at school, home and Crotona to as many people as I can—I try to put my full effort everyday into drawing out other people, helping them to be happy, which I can only accomplish by my own happiness. And from my short experience in the life of friendship I have discovered that I am happy when I try to serve others, when I try to give myself to others, when I sacrifice myself for others, when I try to communicate who I truly am to others, when I have the courage to trust others enough to expose my desire for the truth.
Basically, friendship makes life much better.

Kevin is in 10 ^th grade and is enrolled in the Crotona Leadership & Culture Club and Professional Skills Development.

Back to Crotona Articles Main Page.