FRIENDS
When I was younger, I cared little about the friendships and people in my life. I was taken in with the selfish innate notion that friends do not owe each other anything; that they simply filled that certain space allocated for them during that time of my life.
I was to tend to my selfish campaign for attention and popularity while their job was to provide the fun and companionship I needed and to be proof that I was normal and had friends. After that, they either faded as friends or became totally irrelevant to my life as we chose different paths in life.
I always liked to keep a low profile and still do that. I only make friends when I have to, if they are in my immediate sphere of human contact. This meant that I only made friends in my class, co-curricular activity and anti-curricular activities(like playing basketball after school in my O' Level year).
I rarely extended my hands of friendship to others outside that sphere. You could say that I was pretty shy and insecure. I felt satisfied, comfortable and protected in that little sphere of friends whom I could focus on, instead of knowing a little of everybody and then realizing you didn't know half the person you thought you did.
Yet, at this sombre age of 20, I am starting to treasure and miss many of the friends that once graced the stage of my life. I get really excited when I coincidentally meet any one of them, even the one I least liked.
Whereas I would have shunned or hid from them on the street years ago, I am now an eager beaver ready to dig through mounds of people between the lifemate and me just to say, "Hi, remember me?".
I would just shoot off my mouth a string of questions to find out how they are doing and what path they took since our last contact. My eyes would light up with interest and enthusiasm at their every word about their life from that time onwards and in the present.
There is this sense of nostalgia that comes as the shared venue and times of our interaction are relived, talking about the good old days as if they had been the best, or even good, times in our life.
I have also come to appreciate the unique personality and character of my friends. Though some were on my hate-list, with their names written in my logbook of those whom I was at loggerheads with, now I feel like they were not half as bad as I thought they were. All the hatchets have been buried in the dust of time.
I am dying to hear about the choices they made furthering their studies or getting into the workforce. I am interested to see how they have changed in their looks, personality and character. It is just all so fascinating how our paths criss-crossed at one point of our lives and then went in different directions, whether they go far in life or go a shorter mile.
My eyes would well up with minute tears of an unusual joy as I sit down to coffee with these people. I don't know why I feel this way.
Is it because I knew these people during my youthful days, the period where I would know the most people I would ever get to know in my entire life? The days when I could afford to build up true friendships. The youthful, carefree days where I could go where I wanted and do what I wanted, whenever I wanted to. Are our younger days the most unforgettable phase of life?
Or do I miss them because I know I will probably be stuck in an mechanical, inorganic and artificial office environment for the rest of my life? After all, every office comes complete with at least a few colleagues who are just not friend material, or trying to be.
Or perhaps we must lose the person before we gain the real perspective on how precious each and every one of them are? Absence does make the heart fonder.
Allister is emigrating to Australia next week and my heart, for the past three weeks, have been filled with feelings of a newfound fondness for this brother. I think I might cry when I send him off at the airport.
The feelings evoked at the prospect of another person in my immediate sphere of contact fading off or becoming irrelevant can only be described as emotional symptoms of premature menopause.
After all, I just had a good lot of cellgroup members do what the Bible described as dogs swallowing their own vomit and pigs who were washed clean running right back to the mire. It's sad to remember the people who were set free of chains and returned to embrace the very same chains, jumping into the fiery pit which they escaped from.
Haha, I never felt so emotional and whiny before. And I'm definitely not those Emo Elmo types. It's just that I feel with every step of coming of age and new anticipation of the future, a thrill mixed with fear of making choices in life.
I know this is an unusual post. Just had these feelings welling up in me. Thought it would be good to look back and remember this at a later part of my life.
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