“Friend”: a person attached to another by respect or affection. This is a pretty broad definition; what do we expect from our friends? How do we both contribute to each other’s life? What do we want to give our friends? Undying love and affection, to be a friend is to be there when it is important, great joys or sorrows should bring friends together to share the good as well as the bad parts of life, to share life. Even if it is also true that different friends bring different things to the table, the general idea is that we want to grow old together, and we want to keep the connection alive for as long as possible.
So what do you do when a long friendship and one you used to consider important, is slowly dying? What do you do when you see what is happening but the friend in question does not want to make the efforts necessary to reanimate or continue the friendship? When you have grown so much apart that great joys are not being shared anymore and neither are great sorrows?
Is it a question of expectations? Are we expecting too much of people? Are we expecting them to live by our own standards even when we know they may be way too high for them or simply different?
The guilt associated with losing a friendship or letting it go despite our efforts…. why must we feel guilty if or when things don’t work out? “Guilty”: having committed a breach of conduct, an offence against the law, the feeling of responsibility. But there is no responsibility, there are no reasons to feel guilty when the rules of the game are unwritten and you’re not sure of anything.
Do we want too much out of life? To live to the fullest does not mean the same for everyone and not everybody expects or even wants to live to the fullest. Not everyone knows what it is. Some people like to settle, settle for a little bit less, settle because they don’t think better even exists.
Should anything be done to save a dying friendship? These thoughts are inhabiting me this morning as I think of good friends, or people we used to consider as such, who are slowing drifting away. Are we too needy in trying to keep them close? Are we attached to an image or an illusion from the past when we want to keep old friends around, old friends that have changed as years went by, old friends that became other different people, people we don’t recognize, people we no longer know. What is the rule that says we have to keep on trying and adapt to changes we don’t like?
Do we even enjoy them at this point is a question to consider. The efforts needed to sustain dying relationships have to be balanced with what these relationships bring to our lives. Not in a selfish kind of way but in a nurturing kind of way. We need to nurture our souls. We need to make sure we protect ourselves against pain if at all possible, and surround ourselves with people and things that bring us some enjoyment.
Even if we live with memories of countless joys and sharing of the past, we have to wonder, should we try to sustain the friendship for the sake of the past or move on with our lives and different outlooks when we’ve grown apart? Should we just mourn the relationship and move on?
Nowadays, people like to move forward and forget the past. The past is the past they say. The future is not here yet. So live the present moment and forget trying to sort out our differences and aloofness and analysing how or why we got here. Move on to the next. But old friends, people that knew you when you were young, are supposed to be important to your life. Although I am not quite sure why this idea really makes any sense… Does it really? It is only an idea like any other idea. An idea planted in our heads by society.
What is the motivation for saving a relic from the past? What are the reasons that push us to try to reconnect with someone who has let a relationship slip to the point of no return? The truth is, for whatever reason, we sometimes let it slip too. We, at one point, made the decision that some friends have changed to the point where there is nothing left in common, nothing real to share, and we don’t want to spend any of our time working on this any more. Do we want to reconnect is the question.
When we don’t feel any deep connection anymore except for what is linking us from the past, when each time we think of them, it is regret and suffering we feel, isn’t it time to move on? Friends should make you feel joyful and happy. You should feel good when you’re about to talk to them, when you think of them, when you are around them.
Friendship is about respect and affection. Why are we upset not to feel any of this anymore? Why be mad at ourselves? We need to accept our feelings. What is surging from our souls is the only truth for us. Friendships need to be nurtured by regular contact, by doing things together, by sharing things together. The truth is some “friends” never fulfill our expectations. Of course they are not there to do so. Not everyone has the same idea of what friendship is about. Not everyone lives by the same values. We all have expectations of how things should play out in relationships and these expectations are based on history, family, experiences, which are different for each and every one of us.
And then there is the idea of living by our inner light and to feel this, deep within our cells. To feel deeply that all of us human beings and other creations are interlinked and part of the same overall consciousness and universal energy, that we should not waste any opportunity to care, to respect others and care about others, to not judge or criticize the behaviour of those we’ve assessed as being not necessarily bad but not up to our standards. Most of all thought, is to not judge ourselves.
It comes down to intention. What is the intention in trying to rekindle a dying friendship? Is it to relieve the feeling of guilt that sometimes takes over our heart or is it to genuinely reach out to our friend? What is the intention? To make ourselves feel good, to make the “friend” feel good? To find out if they care, if it still worth saving? To have a true exchange or only fill the gap of silence temporarily with meaningless words? What is the intention? Is there also some sorrow at the realisation that they don’t need us as much as we need them sometimes?
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