Lee Jek Ann

ENGL150
Reflective Essay
25/4/15
Friendship
Friendship is about preventing your friend from potentially losing in the
trading card games. Yeah! I want to make fun of friendship before proceeding to
the topic.
Friendship is an understanding between two or more people. In Japanese,
it is called kizuna. No matter what culture is, it is regarded as one of the greatest
gifts that God gives to human. Animals cant have friendship because they dont have
the way of communication we human have. I want to say that it just exists naturally
among human beings. I also think that human beings need each other to survive and
truly believe that no man is an island. Thats why friendship becomes a very
important aspect for everybody.
In order to give my thought about the importance of friendship, I want to
point out a trilogy called Lord of the Rings because it portrays the element of
friendship very well. In the first episode of the trilogy, the Council of Light forms a
fellowship in order to destroy the magic ring with the cooperation of several skilled
fighters. At first, there are a lot of disagreements among the group members. One of
them is the racial conflict between an elf archer and a dwarf warrior. However, as the
journey to destroy the ring goes on, they become attach to each other to fight
fearsome enemies like orcs and trolls in order to protect the lives of every group
members. Unknowingly, the truce among them has no longer become the issue and
they even make themselves the best friend. The funniest part is that they arrange a

healthy competition by judging who kill the most number of orcs in the tide of war.
We can know that people can develop friendship when they go on their life journey
together. It is a win-win situation because you no longer become an enemy also you
advance your relationship to the next level.
To bring out the meaning of friendship from the Lord of Rings, we cant
forget to mention the ring bearer called Frodo Baggins and his friend, Samwise
Gamgee. They are hobbits so they process the weakest combat ability among the
members of fellowship. Therefore, they have to face more risk than the others
throughout the quest to destroy the One Ring. After separating from the other
members of the fellowship, they are forced to go to Mordor, which is their final
destination to destroy the ring by themselves. What waiting them in Mordor is not just
an army of fearsome orcs, but also the seduction of the One Ring. They may kill each
other before they reach to the Mount Doom in Mordor. It is a huge test of their
friendship because one moment of hesitation may lead them to their dooms. At some
point, Frodo is seduced by the power of One Ring and wants to claim the ring as his
own. Then, he begins to despite the loyalty of Sam and tries to kill him several times.
Despite that, Sam does not abandon Frodo no matter how hard the journey is. He is
willing to sacrifice his lives to fight bunch of stronger orcs in order to protect Frodo.
Finally, they complete their quest together by throwing the ring into the Mount Doom.
After that, they claim each other as their best companion in their lives. I want to say
that a true friendship can be discovered when people confront their hardship together.
No matter how hard you face, one thing that the true friend always does is to drag you
out from your misery as much as he or she can. He or she will definitely not leave you
behind and let you die. A true comrade does not equal to a true friend but a true friend
definitely is a true comrade in your life.

Friendship also makes a person become stronger. This time, I will use my
own experience to prove the point. I am currently majoring in Actuarial Science. You
will be surprised that I was weak in any calculation. I got a lower grade than anybody
else because I did not really understand the concept of geometry and calculus during
my time in secondary school. Luckily, I had one pal who was willing to guide me in
my study. I used to call him Tee. Everyone in my school considered him as a
Mathematics genius. I had a genius as a friend, which is one of the best gifts in my
life. In class, he always lectured me with bunch of theories. Sometimes, it was very
hard to follow him. But, as the time went by, I began to understand the theory of
mathematics thanks to him. My grade become higher and higher until the point where
I shared equal standing with that genius. Laughing in front of the public but honestly,
I was very grateful for his teaching inside my heart.
Not just keeping pace with each others grade, we also have an intense
competition in playing chess. He was in a group of the state champion at that time. I
remembered the time we rebelled the teacher by playing chess during the lecture. We
played chess from 8 am until the end of the class. I lost to him more than I triumphed
over him. However, he told me not to give up on playing chess. He always
encouraged me by telling me that I had a potential to become a pro player in the
future and even could surpass him. Even though I lost and I lost, he still never gave up
of playing with me. Most people will just abandon you as loser after losing so many
times. He is one of my life mentors because he inspires me to a level that I thought
that I couldnt even achieve. Right now, I feel that my chess skill has advanced to the
next level where I can play on par with a white guy who won the runner up in chess
competition. Through friendship, we form a strong bond with each other; we compete
with each other and we grow up together. Also, I have to admit that the memories are

still fresh in my mind as they were just happened yesterday. Strong friendship carves
a deep memory in everyones heart. That is how valuable a friendship is. It becomes
one part of your life without you notice it.
In USA, I found hard to get a new friend. I came to US alone so I dont
know much people even among the Malaysian. Luckily, I met a very good Malaysian
friend in my finance class. Until today, he is the best friend so far I have ever had in
US. As an international student, I felt that the local alienated me at first. Somehow I
managed to find an American friend. He is from Texas. What thing I like from him is
that he loves to play chess, which this is the trait we have in common. He taught me
how to improve my chess skills since I was a beginner. Every Saturday, we have a
chess session in a coffeehouse in Downtown. I admit he is the second best friend I
have in Lincoln because he is such a good chess player.
Friendship is a wonderful thing in our life but at the same time it can be
manipulated easily. Let use a history event as an example. Do you remember the Ides
of March? The Roman Senates assassinated Julius Caesar and one of them is his long
life friend, Marcus Brutus. I think in the end he did not even think that his best friend
would betray him for political benefit. Long live, our greatest politician and military
general. Actually, every human made this mistake. We did not even think about the
closest enemy is our best friend. The fool always assumes that the best friend must be
our greatest ally. The best friend wont betray us. Just look at the example of one of
the greatest politician of all time. Even with his intelligence, he still ultimately
defeated by the trust of his best friend. A person he never tried to defend against. I
think this is why some people treat friendship as an agent to further his or her own
goals. Personally, I hate those kinds of people. We cannot discover peoples inner
mind easily so we have to be careful of choosing friends. There are a lot of nasty

people out in your society so do not expect everyone can your true friends. You
should keep your ace in your pocket even though he or she is your best friend. Do not
trust them fully as I say. I know it sounds cruel but this is the truth.
Betrayal from your best friend is the hardest truth you have to face in your
life. I met those experiences so I truly understand it. It happened during my time in
primary school. We had to finish geographys project in a group. All of them are my
best friends in my class. I thought we did our project smoothly. There was a calm
before the storm and I sincerely believed that. My group members kicked me out of
the group. They told teacher that I was lazy or whatever bad news about me. The
worst was the stupid, annoying geography teacher, scolded me. The conflict was so
serious to the point that the form teacher had to involve herself into it. In the end, two
teachers hated me to their guts. Eventually, I was devastated by what they did to me. I
thought that they were my best pals so they should not do that. Maybe I got the
highest grade in my Geography test. It made them hurt so much so they try to
eliminate me from the group project and I would get a lower mark than them. The
incident was very awful and left me a true meaning of friendship. At the same time,
I understand the true colors of the society although it was just a small matter. Bad
friendship helps people to grow faster than anyone else because you can understand
the humanity much better.
Honestly, I strongly believe that human can always find their best soul
mates in their lives. Unfortunately, the process is not easy because not everyone has
the same page as you. Sometimes, you have to leave out the bad one to welcome the
better one. No matter how good or how bad the friendship is, it makes your life
interesting and it makes you become more mature. We are not made of stone.

Distortions will happen somewhere. One thing for sure is that the true friends will
always accompany you to the end.