"Friendship is an involuntary reflex.
I have always been big on friendship. Disproportionately big. I guess in most normal and structured lives everything fits in their own beautiful, snug, appropriate little places, and friendship has its own feel-good and convenient slot, rather like the best guest room in the house, just east of and one level down from the splendid master bedroom of eternal love. But for me, it has been different, and sometimes it feels like my house of life has been built pretty much with the dubious cement of real and assumed friendships. It has found its insidious way into the foundation plinth, the pillars, the floor, walls and roof. Its presence so ubiquitous, that it has perhaps turned completely unhealthy. Not just for me, but also for my family, my romantic interests and even occasionally for some of my more unfortunate friends. Like some, who love(d) me more intensely than others - or perhaps hate(d) me more despairingly than most - said: "Your friend fixation will ruin your life, sweetheart. Get a perspective!" Ah well. Advise. Often the worst gift from the best-intentioned folks.
Friendship. Such a feel good word, conjuring up images nice and warm: get-togethers full of resonant laughter and palpable happiness in some warm, summer evening, on an open terrace somewhere far away from the city bustle; shared beers and confidences in a dark and cozy pub, as the skies open up in a torrential downpour outside and the jukebox plays an old Doobie Brothers favorite; shoulder to shoulder, battling common odds, and the euphoria of victories earned together, or even the shared blue note of an occasional setback; an open road, wind in the hair, a sense of freedom, togetherness.
Yes, good times. With some people it's just easier to find than with others, I guess. And perhaps given a simple spark of potential affinity between two people, sometimes everything else in the universe conspires to push them together as friends. Maybe they would share the same immediate future, having met on the first day in a new college hostel. Maybe they share a common interest, finding the deepest connection in their love for Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder's grungy, dark tones. Maybe they fight for the same cause, espousing it with the same intensity, at least for the next few years and until something else catches at least one of their fancy. Or maybe its much more subtle, like just a particular sense of humor, that makes conversations easy, fun, relaxed, natural. And a bond is struck, unsullied by expectations or anxieties that mar almost every new romantic liaison, free of the desparate burden of duties that family can often impose. Another friendship is born. Another journey begins.
And while the good times do certainly roll for most such friendships as the wheels of time trundle along, I suppose the nature of every friendship finds unique character in the way it evolves. The earth grows older, and we grow with it, each in our own unique ways, sometimes so slow, sometimes faster, and our friendships change and grow with us. Some friendships ignite and then die away real quick, forever forgotten. Some spit and sputter, like a damp wood trying to catch fire, but carry on regardless, for far longer than you could imagine. Some turn darker with age, growing painful like an ingrown toenail, poisoned by our own frustrations, misunderstandings and jealousies. And only a few grow roots that inexorably keep digging deeper and deeper into our souls, friendships that sometimes outlast a lifetime. But hey, those are the rare ones. Most of your friendships today, despite the joy it brings you now, will most probably fade away the day after tomorrow, leaving just a unique set of footprints in the slowly shifting sands of your life.
Such a tragedy. Nothing lasts forever, I suppose, and not just in the cold November rain.
And as the earth spins around, days pass slowly by, and years flash past, I try and not lose sight of my own self, as I myself grow, change, and morph, sometimes willingly and in directions that I want to explore, and other times unwittingly, along ways from where I struggle to return. And when I find time to breathe, I look around me, and see everything and every one of my friends change too. Some grow in different ways than I, veering off in directions that shall never be mine. Some get lost, mired in the quicksands of frustrations, misfortunes, self loathing, and pride. Them I watch, in futile sadness, trying to clutch on to the fond memories of the good times together, yet somehow dispassionate at the silent end of an era of friendship, resigned to a strange portent of inevitability. Other friends, miraculously somehow, remain, changing spontaneously also in the pretty much the same ways as I do, across the tortuous terrains of time, in step, in spite of long periods of separation, or despite intense shared tribulations that strain the relationship's every fibre. More out of accident than out of any individual effort of our own engineering, these are the friendships I remain thankful for.
And I realize, not only are true friendships born of involuntary reflex, but they are, in spite of all differences of our unique circumstances of evolution and misguided wanderings across life in search for our own identities, ultimately the true gifts of our destiny. Raise a glass of cheer with me, my friends, past, present and future, who read this now, in a toast to that most treasured accident of our fates: friendship!"
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