A Cynic's Friendship

Me: What kind of friendships are there?

Not Me: Why do all things have to be labelled?

Me: Why not? I like to label stuff. It makes one reflect, understand and improve. Anyway, it seems to be a good point to start a debate.

Not Me: you would not stop! You tell me. What kind of friendships are there?

Me: I don’t know myself but I ruminate. Fair weather friend is a well-known kind. Then there are those whom you have just for fun, nothing much expected, but they are good to spend some leisure time. Yet another kind would be the agony-aunt or sounding-board types - those who are reliable for a good advice and on odd occasion for a shoulder to cry on. And some friends you keep just to feel superior about - in whose company you don’t feel challenged.

Not Me: interesting! Never thought there would be so many. I only thought of a true friend and a not-true friend.

Me: I am always bemused by the concept of true friend. Is there any such thing?

Not Me: Why not? Why do you say so?

Me: Hmmm… How do I explain? To call something true is to consider it ‘pure’ and in relationships I feel only blood ties can be pure, if at all. Is it possible for a friendship to be selfless? To have no ulterior motive?

Not Me: What motive?

Me: Oh that can be anything. Something trivial like having a good time. Or for intellectual enrichment. Or money. Or greater gains.

Not Me: Oh but why! Why can’t a thing just be?

Me: But what value to give to a thing that just is. Friendship should have some value.

Not Me: It is your own calculative mind. Friendship has a value, but that value is friendship itself. Friendship does not happen to justify any value.

Me: I cannot make sense of that. We chose friends. They are not forced onto us like most relations.

Not Me: But you just said, blood lines are the purest.

Me: Do you not feel the same way yourself? The feelings for mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter are the strongest.

Not Me: I agree. Our parents are our first human contact and the feeling for them grows because of the love and protection that we get from them. With siblings, love comes from shared traits, growing up together, the comfort of commonality.

Me: And kids!

Not Me: I am not sure where the love for kids originates from? For the mother, possibly it emanates from the pain of pregnancy and childbirth. But more than that I think the love for a kid comes from a sense of protection - when you hold a fragile being, whose eyes are just curious, who cannot walk, who cannot talk, who is trying to make sense of this world - you just want to protect that kid.

Me: I want to ask where does love for a spouse originate, but I do not want to start a sub-argument here.

Not Me: Oh good. Now back to the topic of friendship. Blood lines being pure does not rule out anything else becoming equally pure. Why not friends?

Me: before I proceed, let me add I do not say blood relations are always the purest. Many a times we carry on with them because societal norms force us to. It becomes difficult to admit that you do not have the same warmth.

Not Me: pray do not digress.

Me: alright. I think I am driven in my thoughts by my experiences. Somehow I have always found friendships to have a degree of selfishness, a quid-pro-quo which puts me at discomfort.

Not Me: How unfortunate! I believe friendships originate from an innate desire for companionship. And in that sense there is a mutual affinity.

Me: I do not disagree to that. But that affinity stops at personal wishes and constraints. And thus the friendship does not achieve the selflessness which you so profess.

Not Me: How did you make friends in the first place? Was there always a motive?

Me: No. Consciously I grew closer to certain people whose thoughts I could relate to, whose company I enjoyed, with whom I could have intellectual or emotional oneness.

Not Me: So, there it is. You are talking about true friends, without any motive.

Me: But essentially what I am talking about is having a good time with friends. I always had the impression, possibly due to movies, books and nice catch-phrases that friendship is more. I realised that when I wanted to take my friendships to the next level I could not. I wanted to be able to lean on the other person or even to be his support, but it never happened. I always had a feeling of superficiality about the friendships. Possibility it was something lacking in me.  

Not Me: It may be possible that you expect too much. Why can’t you accept what you get?

Me: I can but what is the fun in that. Let me quote an incident. Long back I was visiting a cousin. While chatting, comparison of respective friends came up. We were trying to get one up on the other. After some jostling, my cousin threw the decisive blow. He asked ‘‘my friend would travel 100 kms to run an errand if I ask him to, would your friend do the same?’ And I had no answer. I agreed that such a thing would not happen. Now this cousin lived in a small town, kind of where you know most people. I sensed in smaller places, people have lesser complex personal lives, more mental and physical bandwidth.  

Not Me: So now you are saying that purity of friendship varies according to the place?

Me: All I am saying is that in my experience I have found that big city life has its own pressures, it is so energy sapping, and that it becomes difficult to accommodate somebody else when you are barely able to meet your own needs.

Not Me: I believe you have been misguided by your poor experiences. Or possibly you yourself never invested into a friendship truly.

Me: I am perplexed. I feel I have always tried a lot. Indeed I have seen people have beautiful friendships where they are with each other through thick and thin. I have numerous memories of good times with friends but somehow I feel that beauty, dependability has been missing. To quote another example, somebody was recently relating his post-graduation times to me. He said “I made much stronger friendships during my graduation days than I could during post graduation. I did not like people around me during the post graduation. They were so ‘practical’”. And the word struck me. Yes, most of my friendships have been practical not emotional. And over the last few years things have worsened.  

Not Me: Why?

Me: I have drifted apart from many good friends. With some, the friendship has been lost for good.

Not Me: Continue.

Me: What to say! Misunderstandings aplenty. Friend-making ability is inversely proportional to the age. How easy it was to make friends when we are kids - you would talk to the person you were made to sit next to in a class. Similarly during college time, you made friends over a shared samosa. But it is so difficult to stay a child as you grow up. I doubt if I have made a close friend in last so many years.

Not Me: Yeah! With age grows our ego, our mind. We start to think, and overthink. We attach meaning to everything said and done. We are not willing to accept things and people on face value. How does one cope with lost friends?

Me: Move on. What else. That is what is the best about this life, this heart and this mind. It will always find a reason to move on. It has to, because there is no other option.

Not Me: So you just forget friends one fine day? How heartless!

Me: No. Of course you go through the painful transition, the pain which becomes severe when you do not understand what you did wrong. Or when you tried so hard to save the friendship.

Not Me: and when your efforts fail, do you just let go?

Me: you try and try and try and then you let go. You know after a point you just forget what went wrong in the first place. Because forgetting is a part of the process of moving on. So many layers of misunderstanding, miscommunication, perceptions, biases, irritations get added that you forget the kernel of the issue.

Not Me: But you said that there was a superficiality about the friendship. Then why so much fuss? Why could you not let go easily?

Me: I still say there was a superficiality. There was no dependability. It had always irked me that this is only a friendship of happiness. In trouble every one is on his own. I wanted to change that but it never happened.

Not Me: so now what?

Me: A silence. A numbness. Friends make you realise a part of you which you never knew existed. And when they go, the part goes with them, and you just feel stupid about the realisation. Eventually, we all get busy in the life, with responsibilities which we cannot throw away, playing roles which are our wont.  

Not Me: how disappointing! The more I think the more I realise you never understood friendship.

Me: I would say I never got the balance. At times I was too close to the book. And at times I was too distant.