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Friends

Yesterday. I attended the farewell function of my boss. I noticed one thing quite distinctly and that is the love and affection among the batch mates. With friends around, there is no superannuation, rather there is graduation to life where one looks forward to regaining freedom over one's schedule, freedom of speech, and freedom of movement. One looks forward to spending time with good friends and having fun. With friends and like-minded people, everything is fun, be it singing, dancing, and chit-chatting.

I feel that one of the most crucial requirements of friendship is trust. There can be a great friendship between two or more people who have altogether different ways of living lives. However, what matters in friendship is not how they live life, but rather, how much they trust each other. Trust is non-judgemental. It's not a subject matter of mind, rather it is a matter of heart. When one feels connected to the other person, and has the confidence that the other person is his well-wisher and will never have any ill feelings about him, no matter what happens on the Earth, and similar feelings are reciprocated, there is a baseline friendship. Without such mutual feelings, no friendship can take off. In certain cases such feelings are one-sided and that's why such relationships do not get converted into great friendships. It requires knowing each other deeply, far beyond the self-images and projections. 

Great friendships are far beyond feeling safe in the company of each other. Probably, the second most crucial element of friendship is sharing. When we share common interests, friendships become beautiful. We may sing together, dance together, or trek together. However, the most beautiful sharing is when we share thoughts and experiences. One needs to strip off all the pretensions to share. It's not easy to share our fears and insecurities with someone until and unless we trust the other person beyond doubt. Sharing our fears makes us vulnerable. That is why, in most of the cases, sharing remains limited to partying and dancing together. The real sharing takes place when we gather the courage and comfort to stand naked, taking away all the pretensions, projections, inauthenticities, manipulations, and mental stories. This is definitely not at all easy and requires complete transparency, attention, love, and compassion.

I feel that the greatest of friendships are those friendships where we explore together. These friendships are far beyond feeling safe, and sharing of inner world. Such friends share a common philosophy of life and set out on different explorations together. They have an interest in life and want to understand and explore life together. Exploring together is magical. When two or more friends understand each other in and out and start exploring something together, exploration is not only fun but quite enriching. Friends help each other grow. If one gets stuck at some place, the other helps him come out, and vice versa. Since they trust each other without any iota of doubt, the mutual trust takes away most of the fears and insecurities in the process of exploration. They share the deepest of their thoughts and that helps them work on themselves to become a better version of themselves. Exploring together helps them grow together so as to utilize the potential of human birth in the best manner.

True friends are rare because it requires complete honesty to take away all the pretensions and projections about oneself. It also requires courage to be vulnerable before the friend by speaking out our deep-rooted fears and insecurities. There is always a possibility of being cheated when we open up. Probably, there is no Amazon, Flipkart, or Zomato to find the best friends. When we interact with different people, it somehow clicks and there comes a moment when trust takes over the fear. We start opening up and in the process, we end up revealing the deepest secrets, discover the dreams that we share, and start working on those dreams. Once it clicks, there is no going back, and one realizes that one has hit a jackpot since there is no better asset in this world than having friends. 


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