The one thing that touches me often is the matter of relationships and the changing perceptions of people about acquiring, maintaining and dumping relationships. My observation herein is about the friendship, which has been the most sacred relationship experienced by us from childhood. I recall here the days of my schooling where I had several friends who were a mix of classmates and neighbors. We had enjoyed a very close bondage till we reached college and had to disperse to different directions for further education and avocations. During those 10 years of togetherness we never knew to have had any big differences of opinion or never had a judgmental view of each others personality or never tried to reckon any one from the perspective of social, financial or personal worth. We had very natural and trivial issues that would disappear into oblivion sooner they occur.
Now I see a sea change in the perception and meaning of relationships. I find there is a glaring gap in the bondage and thinking in the relations unlike the earlier times of school and college. There is a gradual waning of personal touch in the relations similar to the loss of taste in the food we eat today. Relationship evolved to be need based and perishable. Friendship started demanding perpetual incubation to keep it alive. I mean one need to be resourceful, useful and materially strong to retain friendship. Otherwise, friendship will cease to stay any further. There is a negligible value to personal traits, personality and intellect of an individual. An unfortunate incident or a misunderstanding or eves drop can mar the prospects of friendship. People don’t have time to analyze the facts or appraise the situations to patch up the broken relations. People don’t hesitate to swapping or switching of friendship should there be a benefit of relation. Though such an approach doesn’t deserve the label of friendship; it still enjoys the tag of friendship.
The trend is also obvious within and among the family relations. We like to see a friend in the spouse. Our children want us to treat them as friends. Friends are friends. All this is probably to make things flexible for dumping relationship any time.
A real friendship should:
- Value the positive personal traits
- Grow emotional and caring
- Conduct beyond worldly thinking
- Be void of inhibitions
- Inculcate openness
- Not hold closed view
- Be non-jealous
- Crave to retain relationship and value personal worth of individuals
- Try to improve the longevity of friendship
- Correct the deficiencies of friend
The obvious need of people in the society today is personal touch and to be humane. If we are able to extend this we can contribute towards the common good of relationship and friends around us.
