“Everyone is a friend until they prove otherwise,” says an unknown scholar.
He, one of my so-called friends, proves his friendship otherwise. The friendship he means is all about drinking together, avenging, flooding big talks and concerting scandals. Better say, a dipsomaniac, selfish and schizophrenic friend who undermines the rest of the social humble aspects of life and concentrates on drifting on the alcoholic sphere fully euphoric and lunatic. It is unarguably detrimental to my cognitive and social aesthetics as I believe I must be standing on a fair moral ground carved by my age-old parents living in the countryside.
He introduces himself as the devil in my emotional and psychological sentiment. He puts our friendship to an end by cajoling me to drink, walk along the urban streets at night and shout silly things depleting the hard-earned morals. No count he has harmed in my life. Denying his idea, I ask him to choose either drinks or friendship. Drinks, of course, are his choice; he can righteously put his privilege.
The gravest mistake of mine is to put my head together with him during a struggling phase of life as a student. Notwithstanding my choosy nature in making friends, because a fake friend leads to astray and fiasco, it is my failure to have a good judgment. Friends who can not help in need, contribute to achieve each other’s goal, teach to be decent are not friends at all.
Friendship is always proactive not reactive. Always constructive not destructive. A true friendship embraces ideological homogeneity, emotional sensitivity and personal reciprocity, despite the tussles and momentary heats which come across occasionally as redundant factors. But how do you weigh a graduate friend who calls you at night from a restaurant, insists on going to the discotheque, drinks and gambles; enforces and brags sheer arrogance? You can too inherit to best utilize your privilege; either joining up or ending up.
Francis Bacon, a prolific French essayist, sketches the best principal fruits of friendship in his popular essay ‘Of friendship’ They are ‘the aid and bearing a part’ -the third one out of three. ‘discharge of the swelling of the heart’ and ‘the faithful counselor being the other two.
The fruit is guided by ethics. ‘A friend is another himself’ and is the truest friendship. But, in a great fit of pique, friendship can not exist, enliven the mutual bond and cherish the moments of togetherness. That rather seeks sovereignty and self-respect. I choose the headway remorselessly and so would everyone terminating the unmatched empathy.
The explanation of Bacon’s second principal fruit of friendship ‘the healthful and sovereign for the understanding’ has exhaustively taught me a valued lesson to make a good escape into the bliss of liberty rather than bear the brunt of an ideological anomaly in friendship- if ‘the discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart’ the first principal fruit, isn’t possible.
Once-friend of mine had disappeared to this day. Maybe having the same morality. He had been rescued in his life. My academic mentorship glistened his scarred images and that might have gifted him a reputed career garlanded. I still remember how I briefed the lessons I had imparted in the class every evening prior to the Graduate Degrees examinations. He must be earning and living with his first division certification. He knows to whom he owes.
‘See what I do with this certificate in my life which I would never have. I will lead the nation’ was his final remark before getting apart.
I have no idea what he has done so far over the course of life. But I still wonder what he is doing now as an anarchistic facade behind the big talks and crooked smile. He might have been cleaning up his personality smeared by the vile dust. He might have become anything for some in the outer look. But the only thing I know about him is that behind the curtain he is the man of all venom and vice.
Walter Winchell points, “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” His exit was a relief and a straight way forward for me to invite the rest of the world.
Futile is this all but what has surprised and enforced me to write today is that he, yes, has become a principal of a public high school.
What’s next? I have heard that he is a likely member of parliament from his region in the next election’ I am not desperate to wonder what kinda the next generation leadership the nation will succumb to.
High a chance of seeing him the prime minister of the country someday because he deserves what he needs to.
Writer, a freelancer, and creative writing enthusiast lives in Kentucky, USA