Once, after spending five months days alone in my flat, communicating
only with people in facebook and myself (via the bathroom mirror),
I asked myself (in the back of a spoon): "Do you really need friends?
You seem to be doing just fine all by yourself." It was my cue to drop
the spoon, get dressed and make plans to see a friend as soon as
possible.
There was a quotes i read on a web from Alex Williams and it says "No matter how many friends you make, a sense of fatalism can creep in:
the period for making BFFs, the way you did in your teens or early 20s,
is pretty much over. It's time to resign yourself to situational
friends: KOF's (kind of friends) ..."The article made me think. I will be 30 this November, and while I have a
stable of friends accrued over a lifetime, I began to worry about the
looming deadline, this most depressing of cut-off dates. Are my true
friend-making days numbered? Have I collected all the real friends I am
likely ever to have? Most important, have I accumulated the right kinds
of friends?
My oldest and best friend is Errol, born two years after me. The
key factor in our becoming friends was clearly proximity, but our
friendship is one that endures outside our brotherly bond, and in spite
of our some differences. My school years were easy; I was a confident
child, and managed to form a series of intense friendships that hallmark
youth. I had a different "best friend" for every year at secondary school – entirely normal behaviour for teenage boys or girls.
Much as you rarely marry the first person you date, it is inevitable
that the friends you make in the early days are not the ones that
endure. I think that as you get older, friendships become more
utilitarian – "my kid likes your kid" or "we met at NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL class" or "we
work together and I don't entirely hate your guts". The intensity of the
friendships of my youth was borne of a lack of baggage and an abundance
of time. You have greater emotional reserves when you make those
friendships and when they fail, you bounce back, get back out there and
try again. For most people, that resilience leaches away over the years.
The friendships that have lasted for me are more considered and
meaningful. I made my two closest friends at university more than a
decade ago, when we would loll in the student union pub for most of the
day, eating chips and ogling boys. We all live in different cities now,
two are coupled up and one has two children, so it's hard to find the
time to see one other very often. Our bond is still strong, but we are
also more realistic about our expectations. I have made friends online –
people who started out as anonymous witty sentences on a comment thread
– who have gone on to become a part of my "real life". Nobody's
perfect, but we all draw the line on the things we will and will not put
up with. The friendships that last are the ones where you both
recognise that you have a good thing going. Getting older might mean you
don't make that many new friends, but maybe that's a good thing. The
payoff is that you treat them with more care.
And why the mad rush to make all these friends in later life?
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