Friends lost in time
Keeping in touch with others has become equally difficult as keeping in touch with oneself. The busy-ness of our existence belies a lot of factors that contribute to our self-imposed isolation. There is so much to do and so little time left to spend. Weekdays are getting longer and longer while weekends end even before the Sunday sun sets. You aren’t alone if a deep voice of agony stirs in your soul as the day drips by. Interestingly, we aren’t afraid of the approaching Monday anymore. We are just tired.
It’s not like we loved Mondays during our school days. Just that we had friends back then to lean on. We have colleagues now. And they are not the same. Childhood can afford a patina of innocence that adulthood has no pocket for. As a result, we yearn more and earn less — both time as well as money. We weren’t always like this, were we? We must have lost something in the middle to reach this stage of no return.
Furthermore, what happened to our old friends? Except for the lucky few amongst us who are still in touch with the kids they learnt bicycling with, most seem content with the buddies they’ve made in the recent past. Time flies only when we have people around us who help us kill time. Otherwise, it’s an ordeal to hear the clock tick. Well then, nothing wrong with losing old friends and gaining new ones either. Coping mechanisms if you may. We are vessels for our memories provided there is enough space for more.
For what they are worth, how old does an ‘old friend’ gets? A close friend from two decades ago can easily be a stranger now, even on Facebook. How do we go back to where we once were? Too much has happened. Or like the smartasses would say, life has happened. Even if you reach out to that friend, there is bound to be a thick air of awkwardness in your conversation. From sharing the food in our tiffin boxes to feeling hungry for new topics because we are fast running out of reasons to continue chatting, we’ve truly grown up.
In this keen regard, it’s tragic how time can be such a manipulator!
A rivulet that once was there has turned into a river with great ambitions and greater miseries. In other words, people have moved on.
Friendship requires time and effort; but more importantly, it needs presence. Lacking which, you become a ghost for others and vice versa. And it’s nobody’s fault. Again, some amongst us would be able to cross the channel and rebuild the old link. Lucky them! For the rest of us, there is only one possible destination: joining each other in the sea of bereavement.
