My Fundamentals — No Filter Friends

It is the safest place in the world

Ricky Gervais. Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and Louis CK on Talking Funny (HBO)

Last week’s discussion about speaking when prompted led me to establish another fundamental, it’s best to keep some confidants that let you “shoot the shit”. I think the key to a perfect life is “no-filter friends” i.e. speaking without cognitive dissonance.

In my most inner of inner circles, I have select friends where we have each other’s permission to speak candidly. I can’t describe what those conversations contain because well… “NSFW” but I am very proud to keep that our secret. It bodes a kind of confidence to not seek additional validation.

We use comedy in its purest sense, breaking a subject apart and putting it together. We make all topics a product of comedy, even as controversial as social justice, everything is fair game. However we can’t share what goes on in those circles, it’s our secret. It’s how my friends and I build empathy and compassion, we straddle the line of acceptable and taboo.

If you witness our conversations, we may appear extremely insensitive, rude, ignorant, naive, and psychopathic. Yet if you know us for who we are, it’s the opposite of what people perceive us to be.

It is the safest place in the world. I don’t take my no-filter friends lightly, it’s rare to have these relationships rooted in real self-honesty. Thus, we are all anchored and oriented to the higher good of society, that’s why it’s one of my most important fundamentals.

Word count: 238
Twitter: @bhavprajapati

My Fundamentals Series — For the indefinite future, I’ll be writing posts about my renewed fundamentals to live by. I’m not making recommendations or providing medical advice, rather I hope the posts serve as thinking prompts. My intention here is to help people review their own life. I trust readers have the agency and wherewithal to take their own action.

52 | 250 (fifty two | two fifty), a collection of random, recurring, ruminations written with patience for depth and brevity. Each post is written over the course of a week in 250 words or less as a personal exercise of freedom and focus in a time of placid tumult and despair.