exercising my literacy

The ones that "get" me.

Good friends, as they say, are hard to find.

I've been thinking about people. You meet many people in your life. Many of them are just lukewarm -- conversation runs along the lines of common circumstance -- the classes we take together, what we think of that tutor, etc. On a long train or bus trip, that may last half way, or if lots of things are happening within this "common circumstance", you might even make it 3/4 of the way. But inevitably there will be that "... hmmm...." and then.... silence.

When there is nothing to say, and both ppl are searching for other things in common that they can talk about. If that fails, then comes the really generic stuff, e.g. how's uni/church/your weekend; I dont' know what's more awkward: silence, or having to endure and sustain polite conversation. It's as though we desperately seek to fill the silence to maintain the denial of sober reality about how distant and foreign the other person really is, how circumstantial and superficial the friendship really is.

That's not to say that asking about uni/church/weekend is malignant in itself; rather it's the half-heartedness from which it's asked, and the tediousness of having to recant the standard response to someone who isn't really interested. When the conversation doesn't bring us closer, but only delineates our distance. Honestly I can't describe to you how much painful I find it.

Maybe that's why, when one day you talk to someone and you really "get" them, there's something about that that really makes you smile. Someone whom you can just verbalise your thoughts to, and you know they are interested and what they will have to say in response is of substance and interest. Both people will benefit from that conversation. When they ask me about my weekend, it really is because they care, and I can tell them all the silly or seemingly insignificant things at ease because I know that they are really listening. A friend of common understanding rather than common circumstance.

In my lifetime I have met a few, not too many, people that I really "get", and I think they really "get" me. We'll find the same things funny, we'll think along the same lines, and laugh about how we were thinking the same thing at the same time when something happened.

They are, without a doubt, up there in my top 10 blessings in my life. Probably even top 5.

My prayer is that they may remain my friends come rain or shine. That even when circumstances change, that our common understanding will remain. That 20 years from now, we will still be able to yak the afternoon away over coffee and baked goods and exclaim "OMG! I so know what you mean!!" and laugh about the whole thing.

Friends forever. More than anything I want to believe in that.

posted by me. @ 10:01 PM