Beyond the Teenage of Friendships

I believe that in every friendship there comes a stage when the friends of past are no more a pre-requisite for the sanity in the present. When we have moved on and are busy with our new circle of people and activities. We do not, at times, feel the need or the importance of taking an initiative to keep that old friendship going or to make up for the loss of confidence or warmth.

Though this does not in any way ‘affect us’, it does however leads to long term ‘effects’. I personally feel the absence of my childhood friends as an irreparable loss of a unique lens.  which leads to depreciation of the value of many things which I would have loved to see through them. It may of course, have many more ‘effects’ which I am not yet acquainted with.

All friendships start with two people being strangers. It is only the initiative to talk and understand that makes us friends in the first place. Sometimes we are gifted with the initiative and sometimes we take the effort. For example, the teacher changed the seat and a boy said ‘hi’ to the new bench-mates. The relationship that started from there may have no limits at all. There is an initiative, it needs only further nourishment.  The boy in the example above did not make friends by just saying a simple ‘hi’. It took time. It took knowing and understanding. Probably even fighting, forgiving and forgetting. In short, it took nourishing.

My oldest friend today is a friend since class 6. We have been friends for more than 12 years now. Of course a ride this long was not non-bumpy. But when I thought that there is nothing more to learn from this relationship, it proved me wrong.

I sent an email some time back and I didn’t receive a reply for a month despite having talked on phone that I had sent that email. I got really pissed and thought that may be its time to grow up from childhood friends….

BUT, I was wrong. I got the reply late by a month. But I still got the reply. The reply stated that our friendship is a strange thing where, unlike most other friends and acquaintances that we make in the present, there is no fear of losing the person and there is a silent belief that says that this person is not going anywhere. It is relationship that is and can be taken for granted.

Having friends and relationships, capable of being taken for granted, gives strength. We neither want to lose such friends nor do we take any effort to prevent losing them. Then if we lose them, we blame it on destiny and everything else. Even if we take the blame, we seldom learn from it. 

I had got angry at my friend. But I had just been reminded of the nature of this friendship. It made me think on the nature of friendships once we grow out of them. And I realized that it is not just with school friends. It is with all friendships. And it will happen again.

But what changed the situation? I had got pissed off and had decided to let go. What brought things back to normal?

It was a reply, howsoever late but it came. It came with flying colours when it posed a confidence in the relationship. It enabled me to let go the feelings that had come in my mind and to forget and forgive and understand.

When do relationships die? With the death of expectations or with the death of understanding, trust and forgiveness? Or which comes first?

I learnt that it is not the expectations that kill relationships. It’s the lack of understanding, trust and forgiveness that kills relationships. I think expectations do not matter. Because even when expectations have died out, relationships can take a new life like a phoenix if there is enough understanding, trust and forgiveness.

Very soon many of my friends in college will not be around me as much as they are today. Very soon we will not be the part and parcel of each other’s lives anymore. Soon thereafter, we will grow busy and grow up. We will have new jobs, new colleagues, new environment, new problems and new friends. Old friends will someday become like old school uniform. Which has lost its utility but you don’t throw it because it makes you think of some good days of a carefree, or comparatively carefree, life.

I pray to God to give me and my friends the strength and good sense to understand, to trust and to forgive so that no one thinks of throwing away any old uniform for a new fancy dress that comes with the success of life.