On friendship

 

“One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.”
– Euripides, Greek play write

Friendship is a strange relationship!

Lovers get their due with the necessary meltdowns and drama, family gets their own sagas and soap opera moments, but friendship is one highly neglected relationship.

Most of us are social networking geeks, spending hours on facebook, twitter and orkut. And each of us have loads of friends paraded on our profile pages. And we mostly remember them when their birthday reminders appear on our home pages.

It is the only relationship where the demands on you and the other person/persons is very limited. We expect our friends to be there for us no matter what. It is easy to pick up from whichever point in life you drifted apart and and feel the connection as strongly as before.

But does that mean that we should ignore this relationship for the others in our life?

I have had lots of my friends drift apart from me when a new job or a new relationship has consumed them so much that they are carried away by the novelty of it. And I have been accused of the same.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who ignores their friends. My friends have always been very important to me. I try to keep in touch with them as much as possible.

I also wonder how much one can expect out of our friends. I have friends who would do anything for me and I’m proud of them. But sometimes I wonder if i expect too much out of them.

It is at times like these that I wonder if I would be my own friend…

“If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.”
– Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) British lexicographer.