friends*err

All of us are friends, that is, we are all friends to somebody. This is why the experience of building and nurturing friendships is something everyone can relate with. And it is the nurturing part where things can get tricky. They say friends are made by many acts and lost by just one. So here’s a close look into the one act—probably familiar situations of how friendships are choked up by weeds and are altogether hurled to forgotten-land.

Drifting firewood. This is the most overused defense people say when dealing with lost friends. We simply drifted apart. Our interests became more and more different and our circle of friends never had a chance to get tangential. You discovered that you no longer liked your friendship color of pink and yellow. No matter how hard you tried to keep the friendship, there was this seemingly unseen force brought you farther apart. Perhaps too much likeness can drive people away from each other. Talk about “opposites attract”. Still, there are inspiring stories of friendships spanning decades without a single inch of drifting apart.

Broken glass. Trust is the gravel and sand of friendship. It is something earned, deserved, and preserved. Earning trust is incredibly tough—deserving it is a prerequisite and preserving it takes a little extra effort on the part of the one trusted and a lot of faith for the one who trusts. Take away the gravel and sand; the concrete becomes a non-entity. And you can never expect things to be the same ever again.

The crossover-move. “Crossover? That’s my move.” (Now, what ad was that?!) This act often beleaguers heterogenous friendships (probably even homogenous friendships in extraordinary cases). Girl falls for guy best friend and vice versa. You can supply the roles for the extraordinary cases, who falls for whom etc. Some friendships endure this act, but figures generally suggest a very low survival rate.

Green-eyed monster thriller. You first met the green-eyed monster in your childhood neighborhood or perhaps your classroom and spotted it again at the university and in the workplace. Envy and jealousy are two cast-iron weeds smothering away nubs of friendships; even the most deeply rooted ones. Once the green-eyed monsters secure their spot, no amount of boxing up can stop them from causing damage.

Stone cold pilots. Ever met them? These are the friends whom you simply can’t get through. They willfully build towering walls around them but are oblivious of their friends trying to see through them. They can drive you nuts every time you try to understand them and still end up the one shut out. These are the people who have the slimmest of mementos to remind them of friends from their childhood, even through later life, because the best thing they do is to turn people away. Now, what else can you do about that?

Mr. and Mrs. Bogus. Their names speak for who they are and nobody wants to keep bogus friends. The moment a person shows indications of Mr. and Mrs. Bogus-syndrome, you know that prevention is always better than cure. It’s not to encourage misanthropic vibes but one must really be shrewd when it comes to choosing friends.

All people make mistakes. Nobody is unrestrained when it comes down to committing blunders. Big or small, they are part of what we become as a person. Hence, the basic truth that to err is human makes you want to believe that you are capable of freeing yourself from detesting anyone—not even those people whom you considered friends… and erred.