Friendship for the sake of it

Friendship is one of the most precious gifts that make life beautiful. When we have good friends to confide in, sufferings seem more tolerable and the pleasures are more intense. Everyone goes through good and bad times in their lives no matter what place they are in or what educational or ethnic background they come from. There is a time when people find themselves in circumstances that they never wanted to face. They find their life messed up and consequently they start losing control over it. Typically they turn to God and ask him for forgiveness and seek his help through patience and prayer but then they often have expectations that their friends are there who would listen to them and facilitate them to feel like the world is not falling apart. But the reality is that when they face a disastrous loss or have a major failure or suffers from lingering ailment or mental dejection; their friends (with few exceptions) turn out to be traitors by taking advantage of their helplessness and vulnerability. Some will even ditch them around when they are no longer of use to them.

When they have good times, they find many of their friends to flatter and cheer upon. It is believed that a true friend is one of the life’s most cherished treasures. Cherished, because they are not there to dominate, exploit or manipulate when everything is going unpleasant around us. Because of this distinctive nature of such friendship, they are uncommon. One can never feel lonely under any circumstances’ if he or she is surrounded by true friends.

It has been truly said that ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’. But unfortunately in today’s world the definition of friendship has changed from friends to plain contacts. It illustrates that most of our dealings are of utilitarian nature (based on the goodwill and helpfulness of the person). By running hundreds of relationships through social networking sites, people fool themselves that the world is revolving round them. They never contemplate that they are at loss while losing their insight and pragmatism. Right relationships will always be there through thick and thin irrespective of our temper, attitude, outlook, religion or color.

The biggest mistake which we do is that we make a preference of our friends arbitrarily by looking at them from the outside and sooner or later we are made to bear the consequences of our choice. These people are fundamentally there to take advantage of our helplessness while treating us like a crap. Rather I would like to call them as platonic friends who come and go as we penetrate into different stages of our life. It feels really bad when someone try to fiddle with us but it feels even worse when it comes from a close person and we feel like as if our heart has been shattered into a million pieces and we just don’t have idea how to mend it.

It is very difficult to come out when emotions and feelings rule our life. It is here we expect our friends to come out to us and offer us with a sympathetic ear so that it may help us to ease our pain that has grown. There is a well known tale of a hunter who saw two birds sitting on the limb of a tree. He instantly shot one bird and it fell to the land. As this gentleman was at some distance, it took him some minutes to get there. While he was walking towards it, he noticed that the other bird had come down to touch the wounded one with its beak and found that it was dead. And by the time the man arrived, he found both birds were dead. On that day, he said, ‘I gave up shooting for I have seen an alliance among birds which I was not able to see among humankind’.

There are many such lessons and examples about good relations that have endured through ages. The first lesson on the divine and spiritual path is that one must learn the spirit of real friendship. Once that is learned then all other parts of the divine journey will become easy. In education, in religious conviction or in anything else, the best thing one can do is to pioneer the spirit of friendliness. We survive in a tricky world where our so called friends will smile and talk nicely in our face but will damage our credibility and stab us in the back. They will be hardly bothered to terminate their friendly tie as soon as their interests are fulfilled.

Most of us might have encountered with such highly diplomatic people which is not exclusive to any age group. I would call them speculators who are benefitted just for short term gain from their investments. Let Almighty Allah give us wisdom to understand the spirit of absolute friendship and surround us with at least one or two good friends throughout our life.