Friends are those people whose shortcomings are sometimes easiest for us to study. The emotional intensity in relations with enemies does not allow us to keep a sober head. What prevents normal and serious research. And strangers and unfamiliar people rarely arouse the proper interest on our part. And therefore we are usually content with superficial conclusions about them. Another thing is close acquaintances and friends. That is why in my arsenal there are so many stories about my friends and comrades. It's easy to be around them for a long time. They allow you to get close to yourself. And they rarely object to me getting to know them better. Friends take off their armor in front of you. And after that, you can properly see the “body” that was hidden behind this armor. What do you think, why study someone’s weaknesses at all? What's the use of this? Is it justified to think badly about people? Or, perhaps, to be able to manipulate them? To protect yourself from their betrayals and punctures? Or in order to make yourself look better in your own eyes against the background of such friends? Surely someone is actually driven by these very reasons. And maybe even all at once. Now I want to draw your attention to something else. In my opinion, carefully studying the shortcomings of your friends is a great way to understand yourself. What am I talking about? About the fact that we usually do not accept in others what we do not want to accept (or admit) in ourselves. This is a rather complex psychological defense mechanism and I do not see the opportunity to examine it in detail within the framework of this article. But it is important for me to identify it and give you a superficial idea of ​​what it is. If we are not ready to admit something to ourselves (something that prevents us from looking the way it is vitally important for us to look), then completely ignore Given our own shortcoming, we are not able to, many of us find a wonderful way to escape from this revealing fact: they blame someone else for this shortcoming. And after that, they transfer all their attention and indignation from themselves to him. It’s just that if you accuse someone of something, then to yourself and to others you look as if you don’t have this shortcoming. This is what happens, for example with a deeply religious person who does not want to admit his aggressive impulses towards other people (after all, the Lord commanded us to be tolerant) and therefore sees this aggression in the atheists around him. Or with a deeply moral person, for whom it is vitally important not to notice his selfish motives and carnal desires - he also condemns them in others. With an old maid who is outraged by the sexual promiscuity of young children. Or with a lonely “nerd” who despises Don Juans and womanizers. This happens to all of us to one degree or another. But if, having condemned society as a whole, representatives of any particular nationality or modern youth, we simply thus preserve a somewhat idealized picture of ourselves (we are not like that!), then with friends the situation, in my opinion, is somewhat different. We don’t just condemn the shortcomings of our friends - we also know them well. This, in my opinion, is the key to oneself. Having judged someone outside, we can simply exclude him from our communication zone. This not only looks reasonable from the outside (why communicate with a bad person?!), but also allows us to preserve his image in our minds in a way that is beneficial to us. If I, for example, hate Jews for their greed, then I may feel very It is important not to communicate with them directly. Because in the case of communication, I may encounter, among other things, manifestations of altruism on their part, which I will somehow have to interpret and devalue within the framework of my relationship with them. And so, without direct communication, only by reading relevant literature and communicating with the same anti-Semites, I can project onto them for years my desire to enrich myself at the expense of others. Friends are another matter. Friends are the people we reach out to