"Be With Me Forever, Wherever I Go."

 

In most times, whenever we feel an enormous sense of love towards someone, we humbly ask that person to stay; to spend some more time.

In marriage, for instance, as it is in some other vows in life, we solemnly profess our endearment with a tender request:

"Please, be with me forever, wherever I go."

Despite of our mortality though, we still desire to hold on to forever.

We say "yes" to...

... savor the good time, 

have fun together,

feel unexplored joy,

experience rare happiness,

be engulfed by sweet memories...

           ... even for a moment, even for a significant period of time.

Yet, no matter how great a love is, sometimes it is not enough.

Nothing lasts.

We are constantly reminded, night and day, of our limitedness.  And that no matter how we wish to be eternally there for someone, our corporeality won't just allow us to be. We won't have each other's care long enough after all. For this life is not ours to keep.

The "wherever I go", then, is never really guaranteed. For somewhere somehow, I can't be where I can no longer be. I can only, perhaps, stay for a while, but sadly, never for a lifetime. 

We live within borrowed time.

So, I must admit the fact that the ones that really matter the most in life are only those in between "hellos and goodbyes," between "freshers and farewells."

19.11.2020

07:54 PM

Digital Art by: Lot Jr Tabilid

"What Makes A Good Friend?"

In the dwindling cold of the winter, a lost soul sits right in front of me.

There is silence everywhere.

No word is enunciated.

Not a thing is expressed.

Strangely, in the midst of it all, the friendship develops in nurturing stillness.

As the days pass by, somehow, the unheard thoughts resound more profoundly than those that are spoken.

Sadly, like all things in life (especially the ones that mean so much more to us), they don't stay long enough.

"The friends we know we meet along the way," as the famous line of a song goes, "too soon the times we share form part of yesterday."

In the same quietness, I ask: 

What makes a good friend?

To my mind, real friendship is never about: "we are friends insofar as we enjoy each other's benefits." For if it is, then friends are but mere objects of utility intended for a definite purpose for a certain period of time.

Neither is frienship based solely on pleasures. I can't be friends with someone only when all is else is satisfying, agreeable or fun. Nor do I leave him right off whenever life becomes repulsive and dreadful. Otherwise, the affinity becomes contentious. After all, "the best time to make friends," as Ethel Barrymore beffitingly says, " is before you need them."

Personally, true friendship doesn't diminish in the absence of merit or gratuity nor does it find comfort merely on what is receptively gratifying.

For it to last, like authentic love, it must instantiate a deeper sense of connection, an intensely personal one; that which captivatingly brings out the "magic of togetherness" that they alone exclusively understand and enjoy.

Further, true friendship respects, recognises and appreciates individuality.  I value your strengths and weaknesses as a human person in the same way that you value mine. Hence, we don't infringe nor unjustly consume each other's integrity. "[For] my best friend," according to Aristotle, "is the [one] who in wishing me well wishes it for my own sake."

Again, what makes a good friend?

The abovementioned is nothing more than a subjective sentiment. 

It is no perfect answer.

But, I know one thing: wherever my friends go,  they carry with them a part of me as I carry with me a part of them. 

Forever AND always.

07.11.2020

01:14 AM