What started as a normal random innocuous chat about a certain harmful surreptitious activity turned into a full-fledged conversation about the significance of friendship and its post-university ramifications, lasting several hours and continuing the next day, albeit with a different friend. Not sure if it's offensive or laudable, but the conversation that transpired was perhaps the most meaningful to have occurred in all our chats. This friend's identity shall remain anonymous.
And so it began. Kids, in the (perpetual) summer of 2012, your Uncle okay enough HIMYM. So this friend started talking about how people (or someone) has been insanely and immensely significant in my life, and that when you have such history with a friend after undergoing all the highs and the tribulations together, you fight to retain and maintain the friendship instead of letting it go. Sure, things have changed, and sometimes, in order to move forward, you have to let go of the past because that is what may be holding you back to bask in the present and look to the future (as quoted from his church experience). However, letting go of the past doesn't mean letting go of the people you have come to know and allowed into your life. You experience new phases in life and are bound to meet new people, but that does not give you the tacit right to sever old relationships. True enough, some friendships are worth severing, but, as this friend pointed out throughout the convo, others are definitely worth keeping. Citing his friendships with his high school buddies was a lucid example. Pretty reminiscent of a certain lecturer's experiences as he indulged me in a mini lecture on how to maintain long-distance friendships. Found this excerpt from the chat to be quite meaningful (sorry buddy haha):
"..what you don't realise is that even if you are worlds apart from your true friends and you don't have time to communicate with them, the most important thing is that they remain in your thoughts. 'Cause friendship is something one should treasure.." (spelling and punctuation have been edited so as to protect the writing style of this friend).
As wonderful as true friendship may be, sometimes, certain circumstances such as time differences, geographical limitations etc override the desire to maintain a relation (Got berated for making that remark). Furthermore, it takes 2 hands to clap. If one party extends the hand but the other does not reciprocate, high chance that friendship won't last. Having said that, it does appear that sometimes, it is imperative that you let some part of your history go, no matter how important or significant it appeared to be at that time. And coincidence of all coincidences, after this behemoth of a conversation occurred, what should pop up online the next day but an article surmising the very topic we had just discussed. Coincidence because it seems that our FB chat windows have been bugged, seeing as to how most of our jokes always seem to appear online the next few days =.=
Article:
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/unfriended
Now & then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it's an ache I still remember
You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad it was over
But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
Guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know
Now & then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done
But I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know
...
Felt this song to be quite relevant...
Cheers to our "gleeful" conversation dude haha
