Weeks ago, I came across a small coffee-table booklet full of insightful quotes praising the divinity of friendship. Reading the booklet has triggered me to reflect on my journey through building new bridges and witnessing how some of them destruct in the year (2017). I have to admit that it had been a really wonderful year for me, for I ventured on new experiences in various places and met interesting people of different back stories.
2017 was a year of meeting genuine friends who really showed that they care, and identifying a few who were just putting up their friendliness like a drama act. I truly appreciate the ones who stayed with me while I was going through hard moments in life, like when I was helplessly emotional, stressed out and almost lost the fight to peer pressure in school. I was lucky to have all these faces around me to provide advice on coping work-life balance and tone down my incorrigible competitiveness.
I believe that friends might not always be around you, knowing that everyone has to be responsible for their own personal commitments, but you know that their hearts are praying for you all the time. After graduating from high school, I have since gone to 2 different colleges and tried to assimilate myself into 2 distinct environments. I realise that no matter where I go, or how am I with my old mates, their names will forever be in my heart, regardless if we get to see each other again.
Making new friends is never challenging. We strike up a conversation, and just continue it with simple self introduction. And here’s another friend for you. However, it’s true heart-linked pals we’re talking about here. In The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell, it is mentioned that there are only 12 individuals in life whose death would leave us in devastation. In other words, one only bond ultimately close with no more than 15 people in life. From my reflections on the friendship bridges I’ve built throughout 2017, I noticed that not all of the bridges are stable for me. There are people who I would love to keep in my life, and there are some who I don’t. It might sounds simplistic, as if I build my social circle around individuals who are beneficial to me, let me assure you that this is not the case.
In the first college I’ve been to, which I would prefer not to name, I materialised friendships and held onto the thought of friends are made based on how much you can offer. I structured myself into a person with plenty to offer and would do anything just to get intimate with those around me.
And it was a wrong move.
It took me a while to realise I was labeling myself as an option that’s always available. I was not particularly attracting any real friendship, but an option of company. I was not happy, nor were the ones around me.
In June, I dropped out of my course, following the acceptance of a scholarship offer and enrolled in a new college. In this new environment without anyone who knows me, I decided to reinvent myself, and not offer that much anymore. Sometimes, it is undeniably about living your own life for yourself.
I realise many who I have offered myself to earlier were people who did not appreciate, but instead emphasise on wrongdoings and go round changing impressions. It was as if they were manipulating a chemical bond that naturally worked the other way. It was hard to be around people as such. Trying to change yourself to cater to others’ needs is never a wise or comfortable thing to do, especially for people who take you for granted.
Then, I came to meet delicate people, who stayed and listened. Once or twice I might be a nuisance, but there are the rare, real friends who never leave my side. And I just can’t seem to find the right words to express my gratitude to these people. How two individuals meet is such miraculous. Out of billions of people all around the globe, they found each other.
2017 was a journey of building and breaking self-confidence, redefining the concept of trust for a friend and loving yourself by cutting away toxic people in your lives. A quote from New Romantics by Taylor Swift, The best people in life are free. True friends don’t make you go all out without being yourself. Real people don’t pretend they adore you and make you mirror them. Genuine people are who can truly be yourself with.
I thank life for all the lemons it threw at me. I learnt so much about social relationships. Now, surrounded by beautiful minds whose frequencies are similar to mine, I am sure to say that my life is full of blessings. #glad you make me smile
Here’s a list of friendship quotes I found in the booklet. Let’s hope it inspires you too!
“I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.”- Walt Whitman
“Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.”- Aristotle
“The making of friends, who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man’s success in life.”- Edward Everett Hale
“The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this.”- Henry David Thoreau
“A friend to all is a friend to none.”- Aristotle
“Do not save your loving speeches for your friends till they are dead; Do not write them on their tombstones, speak them rather now instead.”- Anna Cummins
“True friendship’s laws are by this rule expressed: Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.”- Alexander Pope
“Be in peace with many, but let one of a thousand be thy counselor.”- Ecelesiastes I:23
“Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold; But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.”- Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Friendship based solely upon gratitude is like a photograph, with time it fades.”- Carmen Sylva
“However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.”- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
“The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.”- Joan Baez
“A friendship that can end never really began.”- Publilius Syrus
“If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. But if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted so that I might share in what I was entitled to share. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.”- Oscar Wilde
By,
Euan Thum.
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