Thank You To The Friends Who Help Define Us

Friends are an integral part of life, family away from family; the family we choose, and so on.

All our life, especially in school and college, it is their company and the moments that we share that occupy a better part of our life. And there can be no denying it. Even the loneliest of us will have at least one friend to say the least. We all spend, days, months, even years together being around each other to the point that we’d know our friend like the back of our hand. They are the people who are sole confidantes in things we may even hide from our parents and relatives, with topics ranging from that first love, to current flames, to grades, to the issues and the responsibilities we may be expected to fulfill by our parents; our friends know them all, and are an active part in helping us see better in such situations. Especially since we are in an age where even the smallest of things can have deep impact. We spend hours analysing the smallest of things with our friends, things that later on we realise we were so trivial even though we spent days pondering over it.

We meet friends in all phases of life, but if there are friends that influence us the most or the path we choose, it is in this age, that we get such friends, whose good or bad influence has a great deal of effect on how we grow up.

“The company we sought to keep, defines us.”

However, just like any other normal relation, this relation of friendship too, is susceptible to issues that may test the strength of the relationship one way or the other. How the friendship goes on, after such instances is something, the people whom it is related to, need to work out. And no matter who is at fault, some things can only be rectified by the efforts of everyone involved, with an open mind.

There are friends with whom we’ll go on these crazy streaks, then there are friends who’ll know everything about you, even if they don’t spend just as much time around you, then there are friends who’ll be there for you through thick and thin and finally the friends who’ll do all the aforementioned. And just as people will come up in your friend circle, there will be people who’ll leave; and you’ll feel bad about it, for how else would you define a friendship that ended abruptly. We hold on to such moments during this age so dearly, pondering over the “loss” while neglecting the people who already are there for us, maybe because it is the nature of human brain to look for negative points before positive ones. And yes, the human brain is hardwired to think about negative things more often than positive things, which further prolongs this state of ours, pushing us deeper in the abyss of thoughts. However, this comes as both a blessing and a curse, that some people actually don’t think just as much, they are the happy go lucky type of people, and though, sometimes we do envy them, sooner or later, even they realise that some moments need to be felt deeply. But the fact that makes them less prone to negativity is the oodles of self-confidence that they have filled in all these years.

From childhood, we are taught the concept of ‘mine’, things that belong to ‘me’ deserve my attention and should be around me for as long as I please; what we fail to learn is that things and people, both change and most of the times during that change, what belongs to ‘me’ can no longer be called ‘mine’, no matter how long we hold on to it. What we sought to keep so desperately, goes away with time and there is not one thing you can do as it goes. Plunging into perpetual state of sadness, will never handle the situation, for desperate times call for desperate measures and only when you are in the corner, you shall understand, all we have at the end of the day is ourselves and who we are, none else.