An Ode to Friendship - II

Aristotle says that friendship is one soul dwelling in two bodies. One wonders then if one has more than one friend, does it mean one is constantly inhabited by a number of discrete and different souls, each dear to us? It is an endearing thought that one is bound to one’s friend(s) by a bond far greater than that of time, for whilst time moves on, the soul is immortal (and my apologies to any skeptics out there).

To my mind, when one befriends someone, one unconsciously gives that person a piece of oneself, a small token of one’s being, a part of one’s soul, and in turn receives, equally unconsciously, a similar token of love and amity. One doesn’t keep such tokens locked away in some armoire in one’s room, or in some bank locker; these tokens simply melt away into our being, becoming one with our soul. When we give away a part of ourselves, our soul experiences a momentary fracture, but on receiving someone’s love, the void is made complete, as if it never existed in the first place. Each soul, each heart is so made up of not just one soul, or of different souls, but of a love shared between multiple souls.

You may opine then how does one differentiate between a mere friend and a lover? To that, I respond, can one really love someone without befriending him/her before? You retort, what about love at first sight? Coming from a culture of multiple rebirths, I imagine souls remember a kindred soul across the ages, and once you befriend a soul, you befriend it for eternity. Coming back to how one differentiates between someone who is merely a friend among other friends, and someone who is primus inter pares, it would seem your heart seeks out this soul more fervently than it seeks the others, drawing closer and closer to its presence however and whenever it can. After all, not all friends are created equal, are they?

Have you ever experienced a gut-wrenching anxiety, a pain in your chest, uneasiness, when you quarrel with a friend? It is little to wonder that one feels such torment; after all, aren’t parts of your soul quarrelling with each other, a sort of civil war, and who would deny that a civil war is anything but painful? When you separate and try to move on, you wrench your soul and cause it to fissure, taking apart that which you no longer hold dear, and receiving in turn that of yours which is no longer held dear. Unlike when you create a friendship, when you give a part of yourself voluntarily, detaching a part of yourself in rage is an act of destruction, a moment that grievously wounds your heart and soul. Such wounds take time and patience to heal, and the healing is rarely if ever painless.

Friends are those who care for us, and who we care for, unbidden and even when we and they would rather no one cared for us. And considering we are one soul, do we wonder why?

An Ode to Friendship

What is friendship? Is it a binding obligation that prolonged companionship confers on one, an obligation to care for, to look out for each other, or is it something that you feel within your heart every waking moment? Does one have to feel duty-bound to respond to the call of a 'friend', or do we leave that to the vagaries of emotion and feelings? Does the string by which friends become one soul inhabiting two bodies, to quote Aristotle, come about by design, by desire, or by the sheer will of the Fates? And if the sundering of the soul from the body after death is described as a torment, then if friends should quarrel, does that sundering, albeit temporary, also cause for similar terror and anguish?

We are told that people everywhere ought to be the same, or that they ought to think alike, and have similar frailties, weaknesses, biases, prejudices, beliefs, desires and aspirations? While a voracious appetite for books may compensate for a life spent in a single country and surroundings, it cannot compensate for the reality that you cannot hope to understand a people merely by the descriptions in tomes. While it is equally true that you could live your entire life with your own people, and yet not hope to grasp everything and every facet of who they really are, it is perhaps a hundredfold, maybe a thousand-fold, more difficult to understand a people different from your own. For it is difficult to understand what offends, what pleases, what amazes, what is held dear and cherished, until you can understand how their heart beats.

And yet when one comes to a foreign land, it is not unheard of for one to find friends who seem like they have always been by one's side, though happiness and grief. There is no hesitation, no derision, no jaundiced vision; just a simple connection between the heart. What drives or inspires such a connection? How can someone who barely knows you, and who you barely know, become so indispensable to your daily routine, without talking to whom a day seems incomplete and bare? Truly, what Pascal says of love is equally true, perhaps many times over, of friendship, that the heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.

It is so easy to say that friendship is a social compact, a convenience; one hears of concepts such as 'friends with benefits', and it bewilders me. To suggest that friendship in itself does not benefit the soul, that it, by itself, does not enrich one's existence, that there have been 'benefits' that hitherto have been absent in friendships, is to cheapen what has been held so dear and true of the relationship for ages. And yet maybe it is convenient for me, in my ivory tower, to look down upon this change, this 'progress' in what can be encompassed in the word 'friendship'. It is a confusing change, but one thing I hold true; friendship will endure as the sole relationship whose value in our lives will never diminish, for without a friend, are we not incomplete, a body without a soul, like a lonely leaf on the bough waiting for the winter to come and free it from its torment?

Musings

Why does one fall in love? A stupid question, you say? Do you quote Pascal and tell me that the heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of? Maybe it is so. But that is why it is so vexing. To one's mind, the very fact that love and its cause is so inexplicable makes it ever more so desirable and yet so terrifying. Its touch exhilarates the soul, filling the body with sensations that cannot be described adequately in all the words in the world, and yet in that brief moment, the heart experiences fear, a terror of loss, of deprivation, of denial. François, duc de La Rochefoucauld says of true love that it is like ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have ever seen it. The ivy of suspicion oft creeps onto the edifice of one's affections, and one sees shadows when only light previously appeared. Like Othello to Desdemona, what was once precious as the sun and the moon, as pure as the waters of a bubbling mountain spring, starts to bear semblances of foulness.

And yet I do injustice to love and lovers when I make it seem so simple to describe love, because love in its essence is indescribable. Could the good Duke not have known that just as there are many colors in the palette of nature, there are many kinds of love, true and pure, where distrust, trepidation, or rejection are but pale phantoms in the distance, and where in the moment and for eternity there is only joy and happiness? Where the smallest distance is too great, and yet the greatest distance is not big enough to keep two souls apart? Where being in each other's arms is just as comforting and romantic as a cruise along the Seine? Yes, there are dark moments in each relationship, and love and lovers are no exception to it. But where there is rain, there is also sunshine, and the purity of a relationship, of the intensity of the feelings encompassed within, is tested most sorely by such squabbles. It is better to quarrel and get all the anger out, and then becalmed by love, than to let it fester, like a monster beneath still waters.

So, why does one fall in love? Who knows, and yet I think the thrill of the whole experience, of it being so unknown, makes it even more exciting, no?