Some things are just meant to be… This post is one of those things. It was simply meant to be written. For a while now I’ve had a couple of topics on my mind. Yesterday, I knew it was time to put pen to paper but the only thing holding me back was the debate in my head: what to write? I switched on the TV and the answer presented itself. FRIENDS was playing and so the decision was made.
I came back from a trip from Colombo a few days ago… It was a 3-day trip with 3 guy friends… We try and do this once every year. Just take off for a bit, leaving behind our stressful careers, demanding lives and daily struggles. Luckily, things fell in place and we managed it this weekend. And that’s how Tony, Kallu, Sammy and I found ourselves in Sri Lanka. What’s important is not what happened there, but the things that I realized after the trip… About friends and about friendship.
We have so many notions about friendship, ideas about what it should be like and how friends should make us feel… Most of us believe that friends should be there for us, that they must be around when we need them... That our friends know the real us, that they know us… Basically, our idea of friendship is based on everything we’ve heard and read, things that people tell us, things that we’ve learnt to accept as true… We’ve all read enough about friendship, but here’s what I believe friendship ought to be like…
Friendship is about accepting friends the way they are… And yet, being able to tell them what you feel is the right thing to do… And they should have the courage to accept and respect your views… They might not like what you have to say, but you still have to be able to say it… You have to be able to tell them if you think they’re wrong. If you’re scared of saying what you feel, then that’s not friendship… Friendship isn’t conditional. It doesn’t revel in saying ‘I told you so’. Just the way you should be able to express what you feel, even if they’re wrong, they should have the unwavering faith that if they fall, you’ll be there to help them up. That you’ll love them—warts and all—even if they keep making the wrong decisions over and over. Friendship is not about finding the similarities; it’s about learning to accept the differences.
Friendship is about not being embarrassed to be seen with the people you call friends… They might not adhere to what your definition of appropriate dressing and behavior, but that shouldn’t matter to friends… They might not say the coolest or most intelligent things… There might be times when they subject themselves to public ridicule, but those things shouldn’t matter. What matters is that they should make you happy. If they do, then you should be able to stand by them and look like a fool too. Friendship means not stopping friends from being the way they are, no matter what the price of keeping that honesty intact is.
Friendship is about not wanting anything from your friends except themselves… Most of us confuse our acquaintances and lovers for our friends. But there’s a very clear difference between them. We need something from our lovers… We want things from our acquaintances, but friendship doesn’t have such clear-cut rules. We should be able to have friends that we don’t want anything from… They should be able to give us what they can and we should be able to find happiness in whatever little that might be. Expectations lead to pressure and pressure causes rifts… Friends aren’t meant to be at our beck and call all the time… They’re not supposed to have the answers to all our questions… Friendship isn’t about give and take, it’s not a balance sheet that should be closely monitored so that it doesn’t go in the red.
Friendship means not having to be nice to each other all the time… You don’t have to be a standard that has to be upheld, an example for others... We are all mean to the people we love at times… We’re cruel and selfish sometimes. Friendship is about giving your friends the freedom to be all these things. And having the freedom to show the less-than-perfect side of your personality to the people you call friends… It’s about being able to be cruel and selfish and thoughtless at times and being forgiven for it without having to apologize.
What I learnt on this trip was that you don’t have to be on your A-game all the time… You don’t have to put your best foot forward… And you certainly don’t have to be on your best behavior at all times… It’s okay to not always be sensitive to each other… If you have to pretend, pretend with your acquaintances, not with your friends
Friend are also not people we interact with over a season and lose touch with.. even if you lose touch with a real friend you can pick up from where you left off…..some people come into our lives cause we needed them at that time or worked with them at that time and then they move on…friendship is like a single malt you have …it takes time and a lot of hard work to reach that taste….seasonal acquaintances are like rum and coke..great flavor when you consume it but it would not have that lingering after taste that a single malt will give you
I’ve also learnt that as we grow older, it becomes tougher to make new friends… People are less tolerant of you… People have lesser time to give to you… You get one shot at everything. If you’re very lucky, you get two, but no one gives you more than that. Which is why most of us stop making friends after a certain point in our lives... We make acquaintances… Collect people around us and then we learn to tolerate them. We laugh with them, hang out and party with them, but they’re not our friends.
I think we use the term ‘friends’ too freely… We fling the word around to carelessly, too loosely. We’re undervaluing our true friends when we do this. They deserve to be differentiated from our casual lovers and acquaintances. So for those amongst us who are lucky enough to have true friends, hang on to them… They’re in short supply.
