On Friendship and Responsibility

I'll start by trying to frame what I mean by friendship and responsibility - the responsibility one may or may not feel towards keeping or maintaining a standing relationship.  I've been thinking about this a fair bit since the 2016 US Presidential Campaign, in relation to posts about whether politics is something to lose a friendship over.  A note here, I'm not interested in swaying you either way on this subject, as all things in life, you feel how you feel and it is simply up to you to understand your own feelings and your relationship to said feelings.

I've met a lot of people that I feel as though I like, or at least want to like as people, and often enough I will encounter something that's rather important to me which they have a conflicting opinion upon.  It happens enough that sometimes I feel conflicted about how I should "see" them.  I may generally get along with someone and eventually find myself in a conversation wherein defending my beliefs starts to encroach attacking their beliefs.  I think this is an important point for me to look at, because it appears a bit like a threshold or clashing point between the importance/responsibility of friendship, against the importance/responsibility of my own beliefs.

I am also thus admittedly highly privileged, because I am much more able to pick and choose what battles I fight - generally nothing about who I am challenges the status quo as a straight white male.  I'd like to have a separate more complex discussion of privilege and expectation, but I felt it was important and pertinent to mention it here.

Back to the subject at hand, I will take the time now to say that I believe you do not inherently have a responsibility to any friendship or relationship, because you need to evaluate said relationship.  You have a responsibility to your own life, and the relationships you keep - or don't - fall into that responsibility.  If you find yourself at a point with a friend where you don't want to think of them as a friend - listen to that, find out why, and decide if you truly want that relationship to be a part of your life.  Ultimately, you are responsible for your own actions and choices, and the relationships you keep are one aspect of that responsibility.

Always know though, being able to pick your battles is a privilege, one of the greatest privileges to have.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo