Buku Kenangan

Inspired by Introverto's blog entry, I want to share what I think about best friends. Yes, you may question my eligibility on this matter because I'm rarely seen to hang out with same persons. As an adventurer in mind, I don't depict myself to have a group of friends sticking together until death do us apart. I flee to various groups of people to satisfy my need of diversity. Having said that, it's unlikely for me to have a best friend. When I say 'unlikely', it means that my chance of having a best friend is 1%, compared to 99%. Nevertheless, I do have a best friend, only one and this person is a he. This fact may be interpreted by you folks as impure friendship for there must be a sexual tension between me and him. And to please rational logical mind, I must declare that my probability having a true best friend has dropped to 0,1%. No matter how you may call that white lie, it is the truth. Truth is not generalization but truth is just a truth that can only be sensed by your heart.

First of all, let me tell you what my best friend definition is.

A. Best friend is not always a person whom you 'force' yourself to hang around him/her all the time. Once when I was in high school, I had who I thought as my best friend. We hanged out together in school like a rat sticking to a glue board. We felt an urge to involved each other in every aspect in our life. We shared stories about our crush including plot of strategies to conquer, had an obsession, in facebook language, to update status every second, and take any advantage we sought for from each other. The friendship, though it seemed deep, actually was superficial. We didn't sync. At times, we were so fed up with each other for no reason and tried to find several excuses in order not to meet each other. Come to think it again, maybe our friendship was based on solely taking and giving, and we acted to meet society's and our expectation of how friendship should be: vowing to flock together 'til death do us apart. As you can see, it didn't work. I ended up putting her and me in this category.

B. Best friend is not always the first person you go to if you have problems and he/she has no obligation to abandon his/her life according to your wimpy needs. We still have our own lives to manage. If you can solve your own problem, do it. As for help when you really need it. Besides, he/she may not be the expert on your problem. Simply put, being a best friend, doesn't grant you any rights to take all of his/her space. I have experienced the whiny side and on the fed up side. My best friend told me about this once and I was not mad. I respected his honesty. Though I felt ashamed and ran away from him for quite some time, he was not disgusted of my childish behavior, he understood, and he welcomed me back. And this leads to my third also the inevitable part of true friendship.

C. The "Sync" Factor. This is one part that might not be comprehended by rational explanation. It was like why did you fall in love with this guy/girl and not with others. Same thing also happens when it comes to friendship. We don't know why but in our heart we know he/she is the "one", the best friend we long for. We don't know this for sure if we don't let ourselves to have a process together. He/she is the "one" if you find that you evolve together. He/she brings the best of you and you also bring the best of him/her. This is not based on give and take principle. It just happened through conversing, experiencing things, and the "Sync" factor. I can take what my best friend criticize me on better than others because we sync. Unfortunately, I'm unable to give a clear definition on this. You know when you know it. The first time I met my best friend, we didn't know each other, we didn't tell names, either him or me never asked about it anyway, but somehow there was a strong urge for us to converse together. We did. I knew his name through others and so did he. However as we conversed, I felt in the deepest in my heart that we sync. We didn't have to spend almost all the time together. We didn't update each other on what we were doing like the stereotypical best friend should do. We had our own secrets. Though he didn't tell, I could see it through. I didn't push him to spill it out, I just told him what he needed to hear. Vice versa.

This was when his path and my path crossed over. As time flies, I change, he changes. We see each other lesser and less. We have different path to walk on, but when we intersect on our way, we celebrate our togetherness and our souls are still in sync. When it's time to move on, we walk through our own path again. True friend is the one who is still in our heart although we 'split' for the best to be on our way to The Path. If the friendship is true to the core, we will gladly welcome our friend back when our path crosses once again. It is a strong bonding and connection. We feel peace though we are in sorrow and we love, not in erotic way but it's more of compassion, a caring love, friendship love. This is the essence or as philosopher may call it, the ding an sich of true friendship.


image, courtesy of neesya.blogspot.com

Posted in: contemplation, sharing on Friday, September 04, 2009 at at 11:02 PM