Friends

Hi all

Friends are precious. They can be a source of inspiration or they may just be someone who can bring cheer to your day. Or someone we can rely on at trying times. Or someone who can make us feel needed a feeling which is just natural to most.

You have family members to keep you company but friends are in a different kind of relationship with you. Sometimes you can't say all to family members but to a friend you are able to. You can joke with friends and be so hilarious but with family members we need to act appropriately.

Now I have very few friends. We are not really close in the sense that we don't really know each other through and through. We don't meet frequently. We only show up at weddings and kenduri or other social fuctions. There we would group up and talk of nothing serious and tell jokes and making fun while there is time. How I miss the time when you can go stay overnight with friends and talk till the wee hours.

Of course  I also have my small group of tennis friends but we seldom go beyond the the club. Not like before when we used to go out for friendly match and tournaments. Though some are still as active as before most of us now are too preoccupied with our own family life.

I wonder where have all my friends gone. My childhood friends and my old neighbourhood friends. My classmates school mates collegues and all. Fate has scattered us throughout the country. Some have even migrated many years ago.

We have not been in contact once we move on and drifted different ways. Only once in a while you hear about one either it is of good or bad or sad news.

Flowers they don't forever remain attached to the stalk when its time, they fall.

Drawn flowers remain there forever unless you delete it.

Among all the friends as far as I know no one has really made it big. I mean becoming successful or famous and things like that. Neither do I know any becoming notorious thank God.

So we are just ordinary good people I assume.

Surely at this point in time all should have already retired and resigned to quiet life. If all of us were again to gather would there be the noisy chatters of the yesteryears. Someone should initiate a reunion of some kind.

Once my primary and secondary school friend managed to track me. We parted years and years ago. But the memory of our carefree days and adventures like hiking up the Maxwell Hill still fresh in my mind. I was so excited when she called.

We made appointments. Met a few times. There were lots of stories to tell. She, not me because I don't have much stories ha ha. She has a lot of experience working in foreign land. Such a brave person living there all alone in such a patriarchal society. And now when back here she made efforts to connect to old friends.

But she is not a friend that was my friend in our younger days. Of course in our appearance we change who does not?  Though I still value her friendship but in responding to her I was a little awkward. Not me alone though, she too. There was no more that natural laughter and giggles as when we did on the slope of the hill which we were hiking. I guess we need more meetings to catch back the old time normality but I am as always too lazy, too passive.

I was wrong when earlier I said none of my old friends are successful. Actually there are may be I don't know. Well I should not think everybody else is like me just a mediore and plain ordinary. Some have done something outstanding like my sixth form school mate. She was in the arts stream while I was in the science. Why we became quite good friends I don't really remember. May be there were only few girls for that was a boys school. We girls were sent to the boys school for sixth form.

We parted ways when we completed upper six. We never made any contact but her picture taken with a beauty queen crown in her hair is outstanding in my album. She especially gave the photo to me as a token for our friendship. That may be made me to remember her.

I felt so proud of her when I first happened to come across news about her and her success as an artist. She made it big. Had held many solo exhibitions of her great paintings in and outside of the country. Her paintings can fetch thousands and thousands of ringgit.

I used to feel so small when I look at my own paintings and drawings a hobby I took up when I first retired. My paintings and drawings are only fit to be hung on my own wall.  When I feel smaller still they would be taken down and chuck into the store room. 

Once I have wanted to go and meet her when I went back to my home state. I might get inspired and could improve on my arts who knows. It never happened. I was afraid that she might have forgotten me so I hesitated.  Anyway I am too late now for sadly she is no more with us as I found out from a website.

Its true the adage no man is an island. The island usually was part of mainland which got separated by global warming may be. The island gets connected by bridge and ferries and planes you see. Even an island is crying for connections what more we  human beings. Is what I write sounds crazy to you?

My thought is as we journey furthur in life we are dropping off friends along the way. Like a train dropping passengers at different stations. And most of us are not young anymore as to be active connecting through the many apps and sharing news. Excuse, excuse and more excuse like my eyesight is failing me  . . .

Put my thoughts in a blog? Hey its infectious!

Friends come and go.

A friend in the real world is still in need . . .indeed . . .

 

Thanks for reading.

Bye . . .