TPO 49 Independent Writing

The ability to maintain friendships with a small number of people over a long period of time is more important for happiness than the ability to make many new friends easily.

Friends are an essential element in one’s development throughout his life. Whether the ability to maintain friendships with a small number of people over a long period is more important for happiness than the ability to make many new friends easily can be weighed in many aspects. From my perspective, I do not concur with the statement that maintaining long-term friendships is more important. I will discuss the reasons below.

Admittedly, the ability to maintain friendships with people for a long time has its merits. For example, long-term friendships will build up a deeper connection with friends, and we will have a lot of common memories for reviewing. However, the ability to maintain long-period friendship may have some downsides.

First of all, when the ability to maintain long-term friendships transcends the importance of making new friends, people may easily fall into intransigent and narrow scope. For example, the contemporary world is in a fast pace, and innovations and progress happen every second. People with long-period friendships usually share the same values and notions. After all, it is human instinct to find people possessing the same ideas and interact with them without any conflict. However, people will stick to a certain way to perceive the events happening around them and become stubborn inadvertently. Therefore, it is critical for people to cultivate the ability and mind to step out of their comfort zone, meeting various people with different values and backgrounds.

On the other hand, the ability to make many new friends is also crucial to people’s happiness. It is especially in a scenario when staying in a strange environment. For example, students attending universities invariably study out of their hometowns, with little knowing about the new environment and people around them. If people can make friends readily, they will reduce the sense of anxiety and keep their mind healthy. On the contrary, when students have less ability to meet new friends, they will find themselves hard to adapt to a new environment. Eventually, those students will feel frustrated in university life and even affect their academic performances. Consequently, making new friends also plays an important role in keeping people happy.

To sum up, the statement is not as persuasive as it stands. Based on my expositions mentioned above, although maintaining friendships for a long time is important for people’s happiness, we cannot overlook the potential risks, narrow and stubborn. Moreover, making new friends easily can broaden the horizons and reduce anxiety in a new environment.

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