Indulgence

a social musing

Eustache Deschamps
Friends are relatives you make for yourself.

With a broken body clock and awake at 8pm on a Wednesday night, I wasn't feeling all too well but suffering from a little cabin fever, so with one request from a friend, I found myself all the way to the Fort to meet up with my good friends. At Embassy, I was absolutely bored by the hip-hop music. I suppose it would have been okay and tolerable had I been feeling 100% but I wasn't and I was just being jostled and pushed and elbowed by all these people. I notice about these going out crowds, they somehow lost most of their manners. They immediately take it for granted that they will be ignored and they can't be heard so they don't bother saying excuse me or tapping the person and even motioning that they are going to be passing by. I always try and it gets results. And better yet, I don't end up hurting anybody. But drunk people, they think they have an excuse to have bad manners. It's just so dumb... Why get drunk if you lose all your manners and sense of propriety? Because it's fun they all chorus and I wonder if they have that exact same sentiment the next morning with their memory loss and their hang overs. I wonder, do they really have fun or are they just escaping some stressed out situation?

Not that I'll ever really understand.

I'm just glad that I got to see some friends I haven't seen in a long time. After Embassy, we just decided to hang out in a friend's house and just spend time together. It was just like the old days and for that moment that we were together, it felt like we were the only people in the world. The whole world outside had to stop for us. I spent another 7 years in that place for that evening and morning that we were together. I was just happy that moments like that can be shared with people and that the idea is reciprocated; we really enjoy each other's company and bouncing off ideas with each other. It's not just the fun that we share but the company.

Amazing how human interaction works. Somehow, I believe that we are really built for interaction. Humans truly are a social being. Yes, I did say before that we don't really need other people to survive. We don't really need anyone in a personal intimate level to survive. But somehow, we always seem to bloom when dealing with others. We become the best that we can be when put beside other human beings.

I'm glad for the friends that I have and the friends that have found me. We are constantly undergoing changes and so the terms in which we see each other are changing all the time. And so the conscious effort we make to see each other reminds us how important it is to see each other. We don't just leave it to one person to make the effort; we all do. All relationships are a two-way street, after all. It shouldn't be just left to one person only. When the act of seeing the other becomes too easy; it is also easily destroyed or disrupted by change. I've seen it happen with my old group of friends. We were always together and it was easy to adjust our schedules to meet up. But the moment reality hit us, grown up living and the like struck us down and we no longer had that same ease in which to see each other, we buckled down under the pressure. We saw each other less and less because it was more convenient for us to do so.

But not with these new set of friends that I have and cherish dearly. We take the time out to see each other because we want to. We want to keep that connection alive. And we also know and value the importance of space. As much as we want to see each other, if there is a need for some distance, we give it. After all, there'd be moments when we'd just be quiet because there is nothing else to talk about. We allow each other to live our lives so that there is always something to share (notice I used the word share and not say) and that we are always growing. In that way, I feel that we are growing together and we allow our relationships with each other to grow as well. And that's healthy.

And so when I do hear from my old friends and they make that conscious effort to meet up, I ensure to reserve that time for them as well. After all, all relationships are a two way street.

While it's simpler to build roads from one destination all the way to the end, maybe it's more efficient to start at both ends and end up somewhere in the middle. Or that could just be a waste of time... But then again, it's just a metaphor, isn't it?

posted by wanggo @ 12:33 PM