In Conversation with a Dear Friend

Today I spent a day with a dear friend. I will keep her name anonymous, because knowing her she would like to remain so.

We ate lovely food, walked along the canal, treated ourselves to a manicure and, of course, spoke about a variety of interesting things.

My dear friend is one of the most elegant people you will meet. Her soul and heart is pure. She is strong, passionate, intelligent, has a beautiful mind and is always very stimulating.

Today we touched upon few topics:

• Relationships — one of the questions that we discussed was the role of a woman and a man in a relationship. What each brings to it and what are their needs. I questioned how romantic relationships are seen in her home country to which she explained that love is a very important component of one’s happiness. Life is seen to be too long to live without companionship. We spoke about the fact that there is an emphasis on the man being the provider of the family. What he gives to a woman is a sense of security and protection. A woman provides care, attention and comfort. The funny question that was proposed was if you don’t get what you need from a relationship — why else would you be with somebody?
• Religion — Sufism. One of the beautiful things about Sufism that I have learnt today is the fact that it takes Islamic principles and the practice and it is applied in a completely new way. I have been very interested in Islam recently and it’s been something that I have been learning about in the recent months. The way she introduced Sufism, seems to be like a poetry injected into something that is quite established, with well defined principles.

What scares us about the future

We started taking about the future, it’s implications and insignificance towards us as a species in the evolutionary sense. I mentioned that the development of robots integrating into our society, scares me. To me, it feels like we, as a human race, is starting to be trained to act like robots by suppressing our emotions. In contrast, those people capable of creating robots with artificial intelligence are working hard to potentially introduce feelings and consciousness into robots.
My dear friend spoke about genetic modification and how that’s something that scares her. Modification across different fields from food, to animals and now humans. We spoke about cryonic freezing which has been a recent sensation around Silicon Valley. It has become part of the employee benefits in few companies. To have your body frozen post your death, in order to preserve it. This does sound a bit scary.

• Values — we briefly spoke about values and what’s important to my friend. She said that she viewed herself as an ethical person. She felt a strong need to treat others as one would like to be treated. One thing that she avoids doing is judging people, because she leaves room for change of feelings, emotions and scenarios. Beautiful answer from a beautiful soul.
• Differences — while comparing our struggles and current needs, I made an observation that it’s quite funny to be in such separate spectrums. For example, I have complete freedom at the moment. None of my moves, decisions or actions are questioned by anybody, not even my family. I don’t receive advice or security as a base. What I have been craving for is to be surrounded by people who genuinely care for me and my wellbeing. Who are there to fully support me and guide me. My friend wanted what I had, even though she is completely grateful and appreciates exactly what she has. She is addressing her challenge with upmost elegance, care and diligence. It’s beautiful to watch.
• IQ — we spoke about IQ and it’s implications. This inspired me to do an IQ test to test my own intelligence, even thought I have kindly received a compliment from my dear friend that I have high creative intelligence.
• Compliments — another thought that sparked up was the fact that it’s so lovely to receive a compliment once in a while and the people who actually pay a compliment have actually taken the courage to do so. It’s a brave and beautiful act on another person’s behalf. Something to be truly grateful for.
• Company we keep — I shared an article with my friend a while back. It talked about how important it is to surround oneself with the people that we aspire to, or would like to become like. We are animals of copy and paste. We imitate behaviour that’s why it’s such importance to be around the people who you like and admire. This is something that made such an impact on me, especially as I have recently been explosed to relationships that have cause distress, lack of communication and lack of growth.

Movies — Here is a list of things we should explore:
* Top Boy
* Finest Hour
* Janan

Music
* Flow by Crooked Colours
* Mosaique by Ash

The moral of our conversation helped me to identify the next following steps for my own journey:
* Travel less
* Eat more home cooked meals. Ideally while sharing with others.
* Have fewer friends, but invest time in developing true friendships.
* Live for now. Relax and tune in to the flow.
* Get a neck pillow.