Friend and Friendship
When people asked me ‘What you value most in your life?’ i would say it will be friends and family and love. Or other things maybe for other people, but for me those are things i value most in my life. Friends are like rainbow in our life, like a glitter in the star, like a candies in my few-favorite-things-box, like a flowers in the florist (cause i dont have flowers in my garden..), like a crayons in my drawing kits, like….any different thing you can think of. Without them your life would be very boring, empty, colourless, souless and clueless. I had, have and would like have a friend from all walks of life in different places and different time spaces. Those are people that i saw might be once, twice, couple of times or i see them till now, but they are still my friends (just out of curiousity, can you call someone your ex friend??).
Friendship is a different story. You can have millions of friends, but must be fewer friendships. Friendship is an evolution of friends, just like a beautiful butterfly comes out of an catterpilar. Friendship comes out when along the way and along the time you share your (moments in) life with your friends and somehow it creates bind between you. Friendship needs to be tested in different circumstances.
For me, it looks very much like an investment. You need to invest certain amount of commitment, hard work, time, forgiveness and good faith in friendship. Without that, you would least likely to have a good return. Of course along the way, just like any other investment, you might gain and you might lose, you might got a windfall profit or you might totally bankrupt But the key is really, keep a good balance for both.
There is thing that differenciate friendship with usual investment. Since you invest so much on intangible matters, i.e emotion and feeling, it has to be an ethical investment.There are certain principles and values that both parties shared and agreed on. I had some long-standing friends, but we are not in friendship because of above reason. Recently, i cut off one of my friendship, because of the breach of principles and values and it really hurts. It almost like a bad break-ups in love relationship and made me really broken-hearted, feel betrayed and shattered.
To make the long story short, do invest in friends and try to convert it into friendship as much as you can, cause it really pay-off later. But it has to be both ways, with principles and values that both parties agreed, shared and hold. Otherwise you will only be a willing victims of emotional abused. But yes, friends and friendship is all you need in this crazy world