Friendship

Once upon a time, friendship used to be a special bond for facilitating special kinds of exchange. Friends could differ from one another or be similar — it did not matter much. Now, friendship has come to falsely mean a synthetic kind of brotherhood. All kinds of support flow easily both ways. But for a formal kind of exchange — something contained, but at the same time intimate — a kind of relationship doesn’t exist. Friendship doesn’t have a home. Friends are homeless. While friends are of an open description, anything goes really, what is not ok with the descriptor of friendship? What is not ok depends on the individual we are talking about. And the individual’s intentions. Talk of friendship as an unnamed, uncategorised bond between humans that is gender-agnostic and non-exclusive has been done.

It is more mature than talk of love as an exclusive emotion between specific genders. Love is a problematic relationship because it is socially accepted only at a certain age. At other points in a lifetime, it is considered to be odd or a skewed emotion which most probably is a sign of a developmentally insufficient adolescence. But friendship can be a fulfilling format which produces no ill-fitting feelings as a corollary. If it is considered to be a wholesome enough container. If not, then it will forever bear the flavour of incompletion and rawness; signs of one thing wanting to be another.

For a bunch of emotions to feel settled within the folds of friendship; there needs to be a base of confidence and contentment.
Nostalgia is one of the worst emotions to entertain at this time. Because it de-centres us from the present, it is meaningless too. Different times have different events that adorn them. One set of events cannot skip time and be the default in another time. Along with time, events and arrangements both pass. What has once passed cannot return just like that. So nostalgia is an unproductive emotion. Rather it proves to be an obstacle that doesn’t allow one to accept the present. Accepting the present is a central part of being here and now. And being here and now is one of the only ways to feel settled within the folds of friendship.

While some other relationships are defined within the scope of law, friendship is defined within the scope of mutuality. If there is no mutual resonance, there is no friendship. The absence of friendship does not mean enmity. It just means a dry state — without the presence of any bonhomie/warmth.

Friendship at one time reserved the possibility of mischief for the specific relationship that it described. But gradually the dry functional rituals that the word came to describe, all suggestions of mischief disappeared. Now, the idea of friendship is very dry. It is supposed to be a base minimum descriptor to describe the relationship between two individuals. But this is not the same for everyone. For some friendship is not casual, and all social relationships are not friendships by default. Some are just bland acquaintanceships.