This weekend was spent in celebrating a birthday of a close friend.
And while the birthday surprise was quite another story, I got started thinking of friends and friendships.
And I thought that one has so many friends but with each one of our friends we have a different, a somewhat unique relationships. There are some friends who have come with you all the way from your childhood. Neighbours, acquaintances, school mates, college mates who then by sheer number of years you’ve known them have become your friends.
There are friends who have been your colleagues and then somewhere down the line through hurried office lunches and stressed deadlines, you’ve bonded as friends.
Then there are friends you don’t even remember how you got friendly with. And when you do sit down and remember, it’s rather uncanny.
There are friendships that seem to be doomed from the beginning. But you just don’t get the message. Till you drift apart and you know that that chapter is over.
There are friendships that could have been better if you only had the time.
There are those that just didn’t get started.
Some friendships don’t need time. They just need an sms.There are friends you just send messages to. No phone calls. No emails. Just smses. Forwards that you think they will like. It brings a smile on your face as you send it imagining the smile on their face. And you feel good.
Then there are friends you simply forward emails to. No phone calls. No smses. Just email forwards. A kind of sharing, a kind of wordless acknowledgement of what you think they will like.
And they send you similar stuff. And once again, there is a kinship in that smile of sharing.
Then there are facebook friends, msn friends so to speak, who you talk to through various update messages, or a live chat on the net. You’d probably not call or email them. And you probably don’t know how to call or email them if you needed to. You are so used to catching them on facebook.
And then there are these friends who come and go from your lives. Who you have been close to and they just disappear from your life as suddenly as they came in.
And suddenly you realize the truth in the statement: People come into your life for a reason, for a season, for a lifetime.
And the truth is, everyone has had their share of all these kinds of friends. Haven’t you?