Accidental Friendship

Barney and Friends

Barney, the friendly singing purple dinosaur defines friendship simply with a hug and a kiss, and asking the friend to say he/she loves you too. How nice. Aristotle on the other hand says that friendship can be divided into three: 1) friendship based on mutual usefulness, 2) friendship based on pleasure and 3) friendship that wish good for the other qua good, the latter being non-dissolved because friends would accept one another for whoever they are and not for any incidental quality. My take to friendship is ultra confusion. I am still figuring it out.

I find the first two concepts by Aristotle blatantly practiced everyday; friendship is often fun and serves a common purpose or benefit. This sort of friendship is commonly displayed in corporate dinners as false and forced laughter thunders at horrendous jokes because the boss is talking; men and women forging friendship because the other has the right connections; men and women associating themselves to each other because of their good looks - after all birds of a feather are expected to flock to together, right?

I barely see friendship forged based on genuine kindness or set upon moral grounds. I don’t think many of us can understand the simplicity of committing to serve a provision of goodness to friends just because we can. Most would be genuinely surprised when people offer kind gestures as a token of friendship, and in the modern society, I conclude that too few can comprehend friendship in terms of giving unconditionally.

I once offered to drive a lady friend I haven’t seen since we graduated from high school home from a function. She thought it was so uncommon, she asked me why. I said, “Because I can. I have a car and you don’t”. Simple logic, right? My extension of friendship was taken in suspicion. Though I drove her home that night, I have not heard from her since. I thought it was amusing, given that we had a really good drive home; we chatted and exchanged so many jokes, but it ended as quickly as my driving services came to a halt.

Another girl whom I used to know in kindergarten lost her daughter in a tragic incident. I felt really bad for her and wanted to be there, just to show support. I can never imagine loosing a child so soon and so unexpectedly. I remembered her when we used to dance ballet as little girls, and how fond I was of playing with her. Until today, she can’t place me in her memory, but I went to the mourning event or ‘tahlil’ to say my prayers. When she saw me, she displayed genuine surprise at my presence that I wasn’t sure if I was welcomed, but I extended my arms and expressed my condolences. I never heard from her again either.

There were others in college, whom were such good friends until I suppose I outlived my purpose or start to pose grieve competition to their goals. I had a girlfriend who felt sorry for me, because I didn’t have many friends. She thought she was doing me a favor until her crush preferred keeping my company instead of hers. Suddenly, I was worth the gossip than the friendship. A guy friend whom studied with me, partied and hung out for many semesters suddenly couldn’t be a friend because he dated a girl who struck me out of the friend list for him…sigh.

Where is Everybody?

I learned by accident that friendship is so temperamental. It’s a painful truth that though we’d like to believe that friendship is a voluntary act at the most informal and personal setting, it still operates within the boundaries of social class, ethnicity, gender and age; this holds true more so for the female gender. It should be scientifically easy to deduce, but when human nature turns the eyes green with envy and the heart black with suspicion, it's hard to strike that simple friendship purple Barney sings about.

Though I had always dealt with being a loner and enjoyed my own company quite a bit with casual meetings of people I know at social gatherings, I wondered what it would be like to be someone’s friend. Then I realized, there is always a silver lining and God is just. I couldn’t find a friend who saw me for who I am, but he presented me with a sound family and loving husband: my best friend; my mother, my devoted and ultimate confidant; my four beautiful children, my unconditional source of undying love.

Isn’t life just so accidentally amusing? I'm someone's friend after all.

True Friends