Friends – A beautiful relation you are not born with! -The Belonging Part2

Whenever one moves out of a familiar zone and into new surroundings, finding people with similar mindset and making them our friends becomes an important part of the transition. Due to certain planetary motions, I have been moving places practically all my life with a deep yearning inside for the magical word called ‘settlement’ (more so now as I have completed nearly four decades of existence as a mortal).

Whenever, I have faced a change in my environment the brigade of my well-wishers specially give me a call and ask “Friends ‘bane’?”(Have you made friends?). When I say “Yes”, it is usually followed by a sigh of relief from the other side. Well, looking at it deeply, the fact we are looking for friends in a new unfamiliar environment carries variety of implications:

1.       We crave for a sense of belonging means we look for people with whom we feel we can identify and share our lives with. We first hesitatingly let them in our private space and if all goes well then this intrusion is desirable and welcome.

2.       We want to extend ourselves in a way we do with our families to some other trusted parties just with less of expectations, and obligations binding us. E.g. If we don’t call, well we don’t call; there is no obligation to perform sociable acts under pressure.

3.       They touch our lives with small gestures and create a warm corner for themselves in our hearts.

4.       We wish to develop such bonds where we build valuable memories of life to be cherished later.

5.       In the moments of ups and downs these friends (almost family), are our anchors supporting us. They help us get up in the time of crisis, and ensure we don’t fly too high when we celebrate. A mutual give and take society is well established. They eventually become like an extended family and as Richard Bach says “Rarely do people of same family grow up under the same roof”!

6.       We share common interests and desires and hence a strong equation is built over common platforms.

I would like to distinguish here “true friendship” with “practical friendship”. Sometimes the purpose of making friends (for so called ‘practical people’) is only to gather information about what’s happening, to be socially connected and visible and to build a network. The reason can also be to create fillers for the spare time they have. It helps them not being perceived as aloof, even if in their heart they really don’t care. They are actually not making friends but using their PR skills to get settled in a new environment. So, basically this isn’t true friendship but only developing acquaintances for convenience or “Timepass”! This timepass building of relationship is also governed by various parameters like your kids studying in the same school, your husbands working in the same offices, your office colleague who is instrumental in this coveted PROMOTION you are looking at or for any other selfish gain!! There is little or no emotional component involved. Since such relations are only an outward display of friendship, I have excluded these from my definition and this note.

There is no end to the positivity that is generated by the presence of true friends in life. Those of us who have spent some time in hostel rooms would know what I am talking about! Eating together, sleeping in the same room, cribbing together, falling in love with the same guy, getting ragged by the seniors together, experimenting with the forbidden things together, sitting for exams together, well the list is endless. When I think of my days in hostel, a vivid panorama of events surfaces in my mind which resembles a typical Bollywood masala movie “Action hai, romance hai, drama hai, Dosti hai, tragedy hai, khaana hai aur bohat saara nach gaana” ( There is Action, Romance, Drama, friendship, tragedy, food and loads of dance and music)!!Those eight years have gifted me with friends I can count on for the whole of my life. Even though today we are geographically challenged, yet the honesty, trust and true warmth of those relationships quite impressively defeats the challenge distance imposes.

Sometimes however, we make friends with whom these bonds are temporary or semi-permanent the most. The sense of commitment that a person usually feels for people in blood relation cannot be equated with the one that we build for our friends. But the relationship with a friend by itself is so beautiful that it leaves a strong imprint on your inner self; so much so that you build very fond memories around these relations and smile for a long time even when it is in a distant past and not a part of your active life. The most amazing facet is when you grow together as individuals in this friendship, imbibing the traits of each other(sometimes consciously and many times unconsciously) or by understanding life together, you nourish each other’s being in the most unimaginable ways. So when one of your friends picks you up in the middle of night and says lets go for coffee and you spend the whole night together traveling through the crevices of each other’s life, helping each other learn and evolve and explore your own journey, it has a different development impact than any other relationship.

I have been blessed with such friends. Those that have kidnapped me from my house when I was nine months pregnant and taken me to a rock concert (open air in chilly winter and sans a ticket), helped me gate crash and then not just managed to make a safe way but also captures a great seat. Those that have helped me leave behind my family and go on a spiritual journey just to help to center myself. Events like this are life transforming, they are like a rendezvous of souls, in front of you are those aspects of yourself and the other which you never knew existed and sometimes you start to look at life afresh with entirely new perspective.

The only negative aspect to this bond of friendship is the possibility of fallout. Today we stand at the same frequency, however, our lives change and we grow differently and steer in different directions and then this friendship has lived its life. We no longer hold similar interests or have cultivated different expectations from life. To validate this concept that a good friendship can end for no apparent reason but just us growing in different ways, I had a wonderful conversation with a very dear friend I have found on this lush green fertile land of England, who like me is a new entrant here and hails from Europe, and who I fondly call as my ‘Jacketmate’ (we both have the same shocking pink jacket and dare to wear it!!)Our conversation a few days ago started with this pink jacket and then steered to her very dear friend of the past who she still holds very near her heart but their respective lives have moved in different directions now and both of them stand on very different levels in life, hence even though you still cling to the warmth and love of what WAS you can clearly see the growing emptiness between the two of you and hence this friend has to step out of the inner zone to the outer zone of intimacy. You aren’t afraid to share your vulnerability with the inner zone but guard is held up for others and they haven’t got much clue about your true self .

The other reasons for fallout can be gross misunderstanding, unethical behavior on anyone’s part and may be difficult circumstances and then the relationship becomes redundant. Now this kind of a situation may leave one very bitter and may force one to think if the term friendship actually carries any weight? However, even such experiences are essential for an understanding of the massiveness of life and how colorful the spectrum can be.

All said and done true friends eventually become a very important part of our lives and make us feel bonded, belonged and valued in this current world where material pursuits have overtaken the basic emotions of love and simplicity.

Lovingly Yours,

Charu

P.S: Dedicated to beautiful friendships of the world, oxygenating the whole world!!