'....my Glory was I had such friends'

IndiSpire #62

Hi-fives to true friendship!

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh?" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. "I just wanted to be sure of you.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh 

“Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . ."”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves  

I just smiled when I read these two quotes. They actually sum up what real friendship is. When you have complete trust in each other, when you know that s/he will always be there for you, that is the foundation of true friendship. And when you get positive vibes from the other person, when your frequencies match, when you share the same wavelength, that is the beginning of true friendship.

Does it matter whether you have friends of the same sex or the opposite sex?
No.

True friends are just that - true friends.
Gender, race, caste, status - nothing matters in true frienship.

Is it possible to have friends of the opposite sex?
Well, why not? After all, all it takes is two willing hearts joined together by a bond that in unbreakable, that is pure and platonic.

Does our society encourage such bonds?
NO. Sadly, this is the reason why we often see best friends of the same sex flocking together.

Remember the time when we were kids? Did it matter then who we played with? Boy or girl? Did our parents or the society reprimand us if we played with the opposite sex? No, they just didn't care.

But then we grew up. We started internalizing the norms of the society. Boys vs. Girls became the funda of life.

Our mind, our mentalities, our thoughts - they all became social constructs. We acted just the way our surroundings attuned us. We internalized the stereotypes.

The culture that we are all a part of always views friendship of the opposite sex with doubt and mistrust. Suspicious glances and watchful eyes try to tarnish the purity of such relationships.

Should we care about such unwanted, leery gazes? I guess not. A pure heart knows no fear.

As for the 'need' for friends of the opposite sex, I feel that what we all need is trustworthy and dependable friends.

Nothing else matters.

Let us all be blessed with true friends. Let us all be true friends. So that when we reach our twilight years, we all can say like Yeats," ....my glory was I had such friends".


[Do share your thoughts on the post. Also, if you can, please spare some time to read a short story on friendship I wrote earlier. Click here]

[A village in Rajasthan did away with opium altogether and replaced it with Jaggery! Read more here]