Of friends and friendships

There must be about a million quotes that describe, some with great precision, what friends are and what friendships are. When I read them, I identify with most of them and think about the ones that I don’t identify with. But none manage to touch the core of my heart. My heart ‘knows’ only when it experiences.


I have always been super-sensitive towards and about my friends and friendships. It is only of late that I have become totally secure. I do not know how and when the realisation came from within that, true friends and friendships are beyond any small upheavals that may happen in our individual or collective lives. I believe this realisation came as I became clearer in my mind that my involvement in my friends and my friendships is unshakeable, no matter what; And also with the realisation that like everything else, relationships and people change and thus if some friends or friendships don’t last, they no longer are. It is alright. However, for certain friends or friendships, there is a continuous, uninterrupted flow…like some rivers…sometimes over the ground and sometimes under…but, continuous, uninterrupted.


A very close friend has just gone away for a year across the seas for higher studies. For a brief while my mind took over and my focus shifted to the short-term…the year when he will be away and how and how much I shall miss him…and I was distraught. Then my heart barged in with its wisdom gathered from experience and I became secure again in the knowledge that distance and time spent apart are inconsequential, that friendship remains, that what we feel for each other remains.


On the long weekend that just passed, I contacted a very close friend after ages. She too was free on Sunday. We spent a very satisfying and lazy day bonding, sharing and catching up. There was no pressure, neither of time, nor of work, nor of the missing months of conversations and connection. I experienced again what I have come to believe and trust in…that this friendship is so deep that distance and time spent apart are inconsequential, that friendship remains, that what we feel for each other remains.


It is like knowing that the core will always remain despite anything that happens on the surface. Quite like the spirit, the soul, that is indestructible.