practical is an often misused word . Its mostly used to contrast like “Ideal vs practical” . The real contrast for me is actually “Realistic vs practical “.
Practical in simple terms denote something that is practiced .
And if you agree to this usage you will know why i chose to start a post on friendship with such a dry word .
Of all the relations friendship is second most talked about relation after love . Luckily its less confused about than love is. Almost every one agrees to the essence of what friends mean.
It can be as materialist as “friend in need is friend indeed” or it can be as exotic as “Friendship is what gives value to our survival” .
what ever is the definition i am great fan of this relation .Its the most authentic relation than we have .Even more authentic and real than love . This is one relation that each one of us chooses in free will and spirit . Its un contaminated from fear , greed and desire ( something that makes love a complex thing ) .And we all own it completely .
Friendship is the most practical relation we have !. Its what we choose to practice in life is how we gather our friends .To me that has immense power to an individual for his emotional survival .
Eric Berne says that all of the human interaction fall in following categories.
- Withdrawal
- Ritual
- Pastimes
- Activity
- Games
- Intimacy
Each one has it own characteristic and form essential part of our life .
Of all the relations friendship is the one where almost every shade of these manifest . Its for this reason i say friendship is a practical relation . Your or my basis of friendship with some one depends on what of above i practiced with in the relation .
While i don’t make a judgment of which one of the above is better than the other . In fact for the same reason we have so many words that describe friendship … friend , pal , soulmate ,buddy and so on .In case of Sanskrit this is even more graphic and detailed mirta,sakha,surhud,snehi and so on..
To be precise its actually …. many words that describe the types of relations we form with our friends .Its almost karmic! 🙂
That brings us to the core of the topic of surviving friendship .
We make now easily intellectualize and say that relations fade for lack of substance . This is akin to saying that an acquaintance based on office rituals and cricket pastimes will fade away but an friend with real intimacy shall survive .I wouldn’t rubbish such a claim but its one sided to say it in short .Moreover it will make the whole topic complex and it will also pass qualitative judgment on variations of friendship, a thing which i find un useful.
In a simple terms , we got to understand this . The base to our friendly relation a variety of topics associated to it . Each one of us connect to others on these topics with diff depth and at diff level. This is what adds flavors to our relations .
The problem is we often let this go un realized . Its these topics ,depth and level that change with passage of time.Every one of us go through diff life experiences as we live . Marriage , emigration,job,economics they all affect us constantly and change us . They also change grain by grain …..our likes on these topics , the depth we choose to go to and the levels at which we like to connect over these topics .
Its this phenomenon that affect our friendship . This is where most of us end up losing the vast network of friends we start with . The key word here is “Relevance” …if you wish to think over it . Its relevance that alters our list of friends !! .And its the relevance crisis why we loose friends (or retain them).
I might have done a cozy post on friendship day .But as usual i choose the bitter-useful thing over the popular one.Consider this as my wish for friendship day .A day i would not like to celebrate (why should we need it) but I agree to growing need of it (sadly) .
And in case you want a simple summary of this post , here it is .
“if we understand that friends change then we don’t have to change friends ” .
Hope ur friends , in wahtever defination they fall … survive for your life time …. thats all we can claim as completely our own earning when we die .