When Friendship is on the Trading Table

As I was taking my shower this morning, I come to think of the people, friends, and relationships that exist in my life and my surroundings. All the thoughts that are related to these things made me ponder upon the true meaning of friendship. Is friendship a trading item? It might be true for some people. It might be true for me as well - at times, with some people.

I would like to bring you to another dimension of friendship that maybe you have never entered or discovered before. Do you know, some people regard friendship as a trading tool. A tool or medium to achieve or earn something. And, there are also people, who never learned how to build an honest frienship without having a TOOL/ MEDIUM for keeping "friends" around them. Or in other words, a tool to keep the knot tight. These 'people' may include you, I, they, or anyone.

Admit it. Who never pretended to be nice with someone just for the sake of the free rides during "financial breakdown" seasons? Who never play with sweet words on not-so-close friends when they are going on a date tomorrow and suddenly realised that they didn't have anything good to wear for that occasion? These are some of the examples of situations when a person put friendship on the table for trading. Friendship is being traded with items/ priviledges/ services.

Do not feel surprise when I say that sometimes, some people need a tool to build a freindship. Without this tool, they will have nothing in common and therefore, will have almost nothing to talk about or issues to be discussed on. This tool can be 1) the same course that they are studying together, 2) one single movie that everyone in the group should love so that everyone could have a say on it, 3) a car that they can ride on together so that they could have their outings together, 4) a guitar so that he/she could fit in and play along with the rest, or 5) the same shirts so that other people will notice how they are alike and that they belong to a particular group. The tool can be of anything. Anything at all.

A simpler example is as follow:

There are Mickey, Doraemon, Popeye, Garfield, and Shrek playing at the playground. None of them know one another. That evening, The ugly Shrek brought along a huge packet of caramel popcorn to the playground. Slowly, the ever-hungry Garfield approached the ugly Shrek. Then, came the talking mouse, Mickey. And soon after, the rest of them were surrounding the ugly ogre. Though they were all very different from one another, they managed to put aside the differences just for the sake of the popcorn. Thus, some of them who were very skillful with words and had sweet mouths could easily persuade Shrek to share some of his popcorn with them. But, others had to climb slowly to the top in order to get some of their shares. They talked, and played together. Before they realised it, they were eating the popcorn together, all five of them. Then, the time had come. They were running out of popcorn. They tried to initiate further conversations and tried to expand their bonding. But, sooner or later, one by one walked away from Shrek, the empty-handed ogre. Without any misunderstanding/disagreement/quarrel, their short friendship had come to an end.

Well, that was when some people use a tool to build a friendship and when some other people need a tool to keep their friendships.

I personally think, there are times when we unintentionally needed a tool-based friendship. Because it happens everywhere. But, I don't think that this kind of friendship would last. The longest might be for months or years but never is forever. Soon, when they had finished studying that same course, when they had gone bored liking the same movie, when other people offered better cars, when they had lost their guitars or gone tired learning guitar, or the trend of wearing the same shirts had wear off of the trend, the friendship, will lose its sparks.

I was just writing this post as a reminder to you, to myself and to everyone else. Because no one is perfect. As much as I would love to curse and pray for the worst for all the backstabbers, or plastic-faced so-called friends, I should try to forgive them (or the least I could do is to forget) because they are just like me, an imperfect creature of Allah, the Almighty God of the universe.