'Happy Birthday Hannah!! ', said the was the voice of a friend, she has been a friend since I was four. Memories of our friendship are not always candid or vivid but conversations with her are always refreshing, and joy- evoking. All through the day many other friends called, friends I had not seen in decades. Friends who lived miles away from me, who had not the faintest idea, about my current hairstyle, the nature of my current job, choice of clothes or footwear. 'Now how did I make friends with her?' , I thought about each one of them.
Friendship is the strangest of relationships ! Surely 'make' is a verb we use only in the context of friendship and not any other relationship. As we became friends, my friends and I made ourselves accept and love each other. Much went on within each of us without us having to talk about it. Friends helped me know my insufficiency, my failings, and my weaknesses, by hardly talking about them. Friends encouraged, consoled and appreciated generously, without me asking for it.
When physical distance separated, the bond grew firmer. There was no anguish like the separation from a lover, but calm confidence that we will continue to be friends. No desperation to talk things out but, pure determination to keep in touch. After years of silence, when a telephone call reaches me from across the oceans, out come the words, smiles, tears and frustrations and fears. An hour or less of chatting, arguing, and sometimes even quarreling bridges the distance of time and miles and make me feel like my friend has walked beside me every single day of my life.
Perhaps every relationship must be a friendship for it to stand the test of time and distance. Oh! that I may be a friend to mum and dad, sis and son and husband and indeed my creator itself. For He is unseen but ever present, unheard but ever speaking, far away but ever near, ever listening, ever loving, ever longing that i'd be His friend.
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