POLITICS AND FRIENDSHIP

 

Once a friend of mine asked me “what does a friend mean to you?” As an answer, I presented a very polished definition of friendship which somehow established the fact in his/her mind that I knew the definition but I didn’t know about friendship at all. I am not the kind of person who walks into the quarrel if subdued so I decided to think it through. So, I temporarily accepted the accusation and decided to leave it for consideration and evaluation with a sweet goodbye. Since I enjoy the accusation and appreciation all along and like to hover over the facts and analogies of life, I hereby lie stranded about the whole concept of friendship. In the meantime, I could tell you about the relation between Politics and Friendship and maybe it could serve us what we seek. Politics is a discipline that defines every union of mankind, be it a family, a society, or a state. So, I wish to start a trial on how politics would know friendship. The best argument for this trial should be how relevant is politics and friendship altogether? To answer that I would remind you all of the simple and great words of the Greek philosopher who whispered “Man is a social animal” and the whispers were light and obvious as the wind which spread across the world. Man being a social animal started living close to each other, certainly in packs. Living closely further required a simple contract to avoid emerging conflicts. A contract was made for the inclusive sustenance of mankind but the twist of the story is not all the faction would have required a contract to sustain because some faction would fall into peace without raising any conflicts. My mind tends to figures out the unspoken contract which resulted in peace is friendship.

Let me clear myself here about a foe to this definition which is “Ally”.   Do not misunderstand friendship with allies, both might look the same but they are quite different. If you dive deep into the meaning of friendship you might see that sometimes friends refuse to be your allies. This is because allies are formed due to common motives between two individuals or groups and two friends may have different motives and prospects but alienation is only because of common motives. Friendship does not require anything to form bonds between individuals, it just requires individuals themselves and a little of submissiveness.

Friendship as the unspoken contract between individuals prospered by the time and several branches grew from this, leading to people as the subject of exercise and interpretation. It grew like any other family or society and made its certain progress and deterioration. Likewise, society or family, friendship also sought to achieve the apex of its existence. It started to differentiate and sometimes disintegrate barriers. Several restrictions developed over time for friendship like any other society and later on broken by the passion of revolution. The friendship firstly seemed to be made between the same genders, or people of the same country, people of the same caste or religion but later on, when humans developed as a society the ethicality also evolved and now friendship has widened its effects to every kind. Now different genders could become friends, people from different caste shake hands, people of different religions share the peace of friendship. This is how politics is relevant to the friendship because it started like any other political entity be it society or a family.

Friendship is the nature of mankind, every human soul, be it introvert, extrovert, or a loner, everyone needs friends. These human traits just define the person but being social is the trait of mankind. People are like a resource, not an independent resource but a resource to each other. The concept of the whole human fraternity emerges from these basic human traits.

Forgive my trial of politics and friendship which makes such frequent and humane emotion sound technical. But philosophy has its way either be of the Greeks or mine, the lame ones!

To understand friendship as an emotion, you must have a friend and if not then at least the faith and the concept of friendship along with the trust that humans are capable of friendship. The concept of friendship is not for those who think it as alien mythology. It can be possible that your lover could be your friend, or you might befriend your family, but do not include pets or books in the list of your friends. I am completely acquainted with the fact that dogs (pets) are man's best friend or books are man's best friend but I aim to understand friendship, not the illusions of real-world which have made us somehow lose faith in making people our friend and searching friendship in non-human elements. Dogs or any of the pets might be an amazing company but it could never match with the true human friend. I say so because friendship like every other relationship is not a completely merrily affair, When you are a friend of a human you deal with the millions of sparkling nerve which can produce as much as emotions and thoughts as yourself but in the case of a pet they are different, you just have to feed and care for them, They have their tantrums but nothing in the whole world is known as a human emotion because these emotions are profound than any living being on the earth. Your pets are just loving back their gods who are providing them food and shelter like we all love our gods. When it comes to Books, they are just a third copy of a human that cannot change their thoughts and they don’t have any expectations. A book is engineered by the very human mind which is propagated through the readers and the readers find peace in the printed letters. Those fragments of thoughts are just the teaser of a very powerful and capable mind which we escape in the real world by avoiding human friendship because we have to deal with the expectations which come as a bi-product with that miraculous human mind.

Friendship doesn’t require allurements for impressing someone, and if you build the concept of friendship over impressing someone it may establish a base but it will be temporary. Friendship is very different from an acquaintance. An acquaintance maybe your colleague, classmate, or someone you had a few talks or you might have helped or got their help. Helping isn’t called friendship, because help doesn’t require anything. It is an independent act. Friendship is a space that sometimes offers you help and sometimes an alternate arena of bliss. Friendship couldn’t be defined in a single statement because it is a relationship that comes without terms but eventually, mutual terms are established. Over time several terms are set and then if both parties agree, the friendship continues or it just fades away. So, in a nutshell, friendship is developed through a process, it isn’t a one-time deal. It starts with an acquaintance and then over time it turns into friendship. The acquaintance further settles into an agreement of friendship.

The concept of a best friend or a good friend is just the concept of a friend. They aren’t the ones to be put in a category, if you are a friend with someone then you are his/her friend without any categorization. It’s this silly world that has made us think otherwise. The scarcity of faith in people and lack of trust in friendship has made us develop the concept of best friends. We label our acquaintances as friends and the one real friend seems to be extraordinarily special so we name them our best friend but the truth is that we have lots of acquaintances but one or few friends.

Acquaintances who someday wish to be on your real friend list might expect you to impress them but the truth is the whole process is involuntary. I sense a befitting logic behind the fact of this involuntary process that is a single person isn’t capable of impressing every acquaintance he/she meets. The scope of friendship isn’t just broad it is widespread. Everyone chooses his/her friends, everyone agrees with their terms and everyone has the option of friends. The acquaintances’ are fate but the friends we choose or shoo away are completely our will.

My friend who questioned my friendship and accused me of not knowing the idea of friendship drew me closer to the very idea of it. Conclusively I do not agree with my friend but I won’t defy his/her opinions because maybe I was the acquaintance who failed to manage on his/her real friend list. Friendship is a very vast and old idea of relationship which cannot be explained in this mere passage or maybe I am a terrible writer.