To whomever it may concern,

I don’t know how you pick your friends. I don’t know how anyone picks friends really. Are we friends or acquaintances?Are we friends just out of convenience?At what stage does someone become a friend? Is it a vetting process? Do you have boxes you’re ticking mentally?Or physically? No, honestly what is?

Surprisingly, society has no given absolute so I’m left with so many questions,so many. Society has something to say about your opinions, your thoughts, your actions, your decisions, the options you have, that popular box that’s always referred to when it’s a social matter but friendship makes  no appearance and even if  it does…you catch the drift, right?

We go through life with so many depictions of who your friends should be. Parents depict a picture that friends are the ones who mislead you. Teachers reiterate the same. “Avoid bad company” “Show me your friends and I’ll tell you your character” As we grow up, the same words keep on bouncing back and forth until the painted picture is smudged with confusion and lack of understanding. Even when we are told to keep good company, it’s just assumed that we are aware of what we’re doing. When I was younger I once asked my mom ‘who’s a good friend?’ and she barely answered me.She blurted a ‘haiyaa,Moraa you want to mean you don’t know who a good friend is?All these years…’ sighing as she kept on highlighting who a bad friend is. She never gave me a direct answer. I suppose the opposite of those traits are what should characterize who a good friend is. However,isn’t that just like saying the opposite of dying is living, yet living and existing are not one and the same thing?

Anyway,

I grew up. I exposed myself. I am still learning and unlearning.

I think that friendships need a lot of effort, a lot of it. You are literally learning another human being from scratch, you’re learning their behaviours, you’re learning patterns, you’re seeing another human being with your own biased perspective, you’re understanding that they might be different from you and also learning that it’s okay, that everyone is unique,you’re appalled by the immeasurable amount of love this certain human being has for Aurora or cats or milkshakes, you’re understanding that this person has lows as well,faces a shitload of pain and suffering.You’re also learning that this person has opinions which you might not agree with.You’re learning there’s a line you don’t cross.There’s respect and mutual understanding.You’re learning that you’ll disagree and have rough patches and that you’ll have to work through it,together.You’re understanding that that you are human and social relations are quite something else.You realize that people are people and they don’t understand everything.

You learn it’s about taking the good with the bad. It’s knowing your friend sucks at a particular thing and being okay with it. It’s seeing them when they hit their lowest ebbs and rubbing them on the back softly,comforting them, providing solace as cliche as it sounds. It’s listening to what they are bitter about and talking through it.Heck, it’s not just listening to reply but to understand their point of view and helping in whichever way you can. It’s not using their weaknesses to make yourself feel better.This is bad,very.

You’re learning that communication is the constant bridge you’ll have to construct with every human relation you have.You perceive that it’s going to be easy,talking right? Until it’s no longer about ‘what’s good’, ‘what’s popping’ ,’let’s do this another time yeah?’, but beyond that,until it’s about the real things is when you realize that it’s not easy,people are not easy, people are not products you pick up on a shelf in the mall and read the instructions that are on the back.People don’t come with a label tag. Human beings are layered up, like purple onions and that sometimes you’ll cry when you’re revealing what’s under those layers; the process is tasking.

Communication is the fuel that keeps those turbines rolling, it’s what feeds trust and loyalty, it’s the one that steers the direction and you become aware that human beings are scared,most of the time, that fear is not just a four letter word.You realize the more you talk about the things that matter, the more people let go, that it gets better when you shift the conversations you’re having to what constitutes a person’s daily life;like how they really felt when they managed to get out of bed in time or how shaken they were when they failed a test on a unit they love, or what it means to them being brought up by a single mom, having both parents? being an orphan? You talk about life from the mindless banter about cars and weather and lecturers to more in-depth chitchats, not to compete with the other on the basis of who knows more but to really see life through another person; misogyny,love,heartbreak,death,sex,religion,music,civil rights,masculinity,mental health,the education system,poverty et cetera.

You come to the realization that we live in a very selfish society, one full of narcissistic, lonely and sad people. People who want to maintain that status quo, who want to feed the ego, that and only that.It’s a pity.You also see the menace  that is social media that is destroying us,slowly. People hiding behind memes, all to be taken as humour,comical.It’s never that serious right? But is it? No one wants to talk to one another. People just want to be “on-screen buddies”.Escapism is what our species have resorted to. And now there’s hashtag goals for literally everything.Then there’s squads.Squads are supposedly your closest loop of friends, the ones who always come through, but we don’t talk to our squads, we just have silly chitchats that are immaterial, that lack structure and form,that have no weight,they are just smoke,rise and rise until it disappears.

You figure all this out and decide.You decide whether you want to live a meaningful life.You decide whether you want to fill your space with ‘clutter’. You decide on what you’re letting go and what you’re holding to.You decide to set your intentions right.You decide to take it upon yourself to work on your relations. You decide to stop pointing fingers to everyone else but you. You decide to become a better version yourself. You decide that the best version of yourself is all that’s necessary in this life. What do you have to lose? Everything.Or nothing.

So maybe it all starts by being a friend, by not looking for a good friend, it all starts from within.Cultivate a healthy relationship with yourself.Fill yourself with love till it overflows then you can decorate other people’s hearts with warmth and love and fresh breaths of life.Be at a hundred with yourself then radiate this energy with others;building relations that matter and ones that will last.

That said,no one knows anyone completely.One doesn’t know themselves completely either.One only opens themselves up, as far as they are willing to. I don’t think anyone can lose all their control to someone else a hundred percent,consciously or not.Everyone has a part of themselves that is sacred to them, a part they hold so dearly,cherished.

So bffs? Naah, I don’t copy.

 

 

∞send love to whoever comes your way∞