2nd W@lker article

Here's the 2nd one:

Friends Forever?

Recently, one of my female friends had been deeply troubled by problems with her best friend, a ‘he’, at that. Apparently, she felt that the friendship was changing. Her really pinning for his companionship every so often without getting any, while him being busy with his own work. Worse was when she happened to stumble upon something he wrote about his best friend, with mention to another guy and not her.

A friendship lost? I’m sure many of us have faced similar situations before, I myself included. How funny it is that when faced with a similar situation, one is not able to find the words to console oneself, yet one can stumble upon realisation and facts to comfort others when others face those problems. When lost in the maze, it is so hard to find the right turns to bring oneself out of it. When out of the maze, looking at it with a bird’s eye view, it is yet so easy to guide another, lost in the maze, out of it. Logic does not prevail in the lost; panic and fear does.

But thank God others too experience similar problems, and that they may bring it to us, and in trying to comfort them, we learn of truths of which are comforting to ourselves as well. Thus, the next time someone forth a problem to you, do not feel bothered by it, for God might have just given you a chance to help yourself.

Friends come and go. Different people accompany you through different periods of your life. Although the word “best” is usually used to describe only one, yet not one but many have filled up the position of “best friend”, each at different times. Perhaps we should change our concept of “best friend” to “best friend of the moment”? Some “best friends” last longer than others. In the end, you might even be able to find one that last you for the rest of your life. However, undeniably, everyone had had more than one “best friend” in his or her lifetime.

Is “friends forever” an impossible concept then? Are friends just some tangible, expendable objects that are there when you need them and disposed of when you do not?

Luckily, it is not really as gleam as it seems. It’s more of that people have been looking in the wrong direction in the pursuit of friendship. When you look deeper, beyond the level of human friendship, you’ll realise there’s a friend that has always been beside you all along, appearing in so many forms that you do not realise his presence. How many times have we heard of the phrase “See the God in the people around you” without realising He is especially present in the friends around you? He is the friend that has always been beside you, in the form of the many different friends that have been beside you at different times.

He knows better than ourselves that we need friends, especially on who would stand beside us tiding us through storms of difficulty. That is why He has sent that one close friend to each of us, that one who seems to be of so much help as of that moment. Is that not why we and that person have became such good friends in the first place, that he or she has stood by us, helping us so much in times of difficulties?

Why then, has He allowed the friend to leave us, to leave us alone seemingly without friendship?

He did not.

The person may have left but friendship has not. In clinging on to that one single person, we fail to see the existence of friendship in others. True, that one special person may have left, but look around and we’ll find others who have moved in to fill up that need. In the pursuit of one human, we fail to see the friendship of that one God; in the pursuit of temporary, tangible relief, we fail to see the invisible, everlasting love of God.

Looking from another angle too, let us ask ourselves: Are we so selfish, if that person had been very good at helping us, to deny others of his or help? Just as we needed his or her help, perhaps another is also in dire need of that aid. Perhaps God has simply redirected him or her to aid another person for a while. If He had meant for the two of you to enjoy a friendship that lasts longer, do not worry, for He will direct him or her back again at some other point. Don’t you too experience incidents when you may have lost contact with some one for months or years only to have him or her to reappear again to play a crucial part in your life again?

Or are we so selfish as to think that we’re the only ones in need of help and that special friend needs no help whatsoever? Everyone has his limitations. Perhaps it is not within our limits to help that friend at this time and God has simply gotten another to offer him the help through that period?

Likewise, when God directs another person to you for your help, it is your turn to give him or her that help and friendship, instead of just trying to cling on to another. Give freely as others have given you so that others may see God in you.

Let us, instead of asking for friendship, give friendship freely. When that special friend seems so occupied with his or her own matters, seems more occupied with other people, seems to have been neglecting you, do not lament. Instead, as a true friend as you claim yourself to be, stand by him or her during the hard times. Be there ready for him or her.

However, do not feel ashamed to tell your friend about your burdens, your problems, or simply how you’ve been doing. Contrary to what many believe, it is never a burden to hear from another person his or her worries, life, or achievements, no matter how irrelevant or how little one can help. Rather, by sharing, not only can you lighten your own load, but it also serves to show the other person that you do think about him or her and that he or she is special enough for you to share your life with. Do so especially when you feel that person had been neglecting you, for everyone needs a reminder now and then that there’s still someone special there and that someone cares. Once again, it is the point of not just asking, but giving.

Perhaps many of us have just been asking for friendship, without realising that it should be given instead. Instead of asking for friends, we should be friends to others. St. Francis asked God to grant that he may seek not so much to be loved as to love. How applicable it is to friendship. Seek not so much to have friends as to be friends to others. So the next time, instead of asking: “Hi! Would you like to be my friend?” ask: “Hi! Can I be your friend?”

I am W@lker and I too stretch out my hand and say the same to all of you.

“Hi! Can I be your friend?”

W@lker

(First done 4^th July 2003)