Acquaintance in need is acquaintance indeed

The first Sunday of August, I’ve known since school, is friendship day. Everybody made a big deal of it in school. Wishes, cards, those home-spun friendship day bands that would be distributed. You were expected to wear them. Some girls would weave them from wool instead of cotton thread, and your wrist would turn red and burn with fabric rash. Still, you were supposed to feel lucky. Someone had deemed you friend-worthy. Rejoice in the lord. Sentiment and girls — always a big deal in school. (What a relief that phase is over! Kill me with your corny wristbands!)

So, since the cue was timely and obvious, I thought I’d write something about friendships and try to mentally not groan. How hard is it to do an ode to good times and laughter and trust and vulnerability, blah, blah, and veer into being grateful for my handful for enabling that emotional and psychological intimacy? Harder than I would think, evidently.

As of this para, the struggle is real: What on earth do I have to say about friendship? Nothing. They’re there. Friends exist. I like my friends. They’re on WhatsApp. We laugh, keep up, exchange notes, daily or weekly or monthly updates. But what of them? There’s no headline here. No overarching sentiment, unless ‘can we stop making a big deal out of it’ counts.

What do I have to say about friendship? Well, it’s not something I think of on a daily basis. So I’m struggling here. Do I miss my friends though? Sure! Despite that, sometime in the past month, I was skyping with a close friend, we struck this common chord of how we think we don’t miss people. But when we meet the ones we actually have missed, it comes back — how much fun you used to have, how

But when we meet the ones we actually have missed, it comes back — how much fun you used to have, how much you used to enjoy going out

much you used to enjoy going out with so and so, how easily you fell into your old ways of being obnoxious, taking for granted, and cackling inappropriately because you had no masks, no rules to follow of what’s proper. That’s friendship, isn’t it? No rules to follow? Friendship is a certain mutually respected freedom. There, I’ve tossed my two-bit definition in the hat now.

A non-friend (I’d categorise as ‘close acquaintance’) recently told me that she finds it odd that she’s nicer, more courteous to semi-strangers/ acquaintances than to her friends. Perfectly logical to me. She said she can tell her friends, the inner circle, to shut up any time without having to watch her tone. I told her that’s great. Who needs the formality?

Since I don’t have a proper ode to friendship, why not revel in thoughts of worthier minds. I like David Whyte. Here’s what the poet-philosopher says about acquaintances: “These are the magnifiers of spirit to whom we are bound by mutual goodwill, sympathy, and respect, but we infer this resonance from one another’s polished public selves — our ideal selves — rather than from intimate knowledge of one another’s interior lives, personal struggles, inner contradictions, and most vulnerable crevices of character”.

Most vulnerable crevices of character. Oof ! I love that.

And here’s what he says about friends. “The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone”.

nivriti@khaleejtimes.com