Many philosophers have described a friend. I get forwarded email almost every two days saying what a friend is, and that if a forward that email to ten more friends, I will be their best friend or something like that. According to American heritage dictionary: Friend-A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.
One of my favorite words is “perspective/perception”. In my perspective, the word friend implicates different for every individual. Even for 1 person, its meaning varies temporally. For instance, during my school days, my friends were the ones with whom I played football or hockey or basketball. After school, the friends were the ones with whom I talked about girlfriends and there was a big shift of gender preference. With majority of guyz as my friends during my school-times, I barely had more than 3-4 male friends with whom I talked daily. Slowly as time passed, only the girlfriend remained to be my friend. Saying this, I imply the dictionary meaning, ie like, trust,etc. Rest all were to hang around, crank jokes, etc.
Now one of my known-one, who is married and works full time says that after marriage, one can’t have the same relation with old friends. You get friendly with married individuals and with your job peers.
So what is a friend? If friend is the one who you know, like or trust, then that person shouldn’t be changing with that frequently, atleast not without any good reason.
To further complicate the situation, there are sub-groups of this word, like friend, good friend, best friend, better than the best friend and what not. When I see around, people have formed groups. Then they say he is my friend of that group and not from the group with whom I will be going around this weekend. The world has become so advanced that they can rank friends and classify them in groups, but I am soo behind, I don’t even know what one means by calling that person as friend. Should I consider my school-mates with whom I am still in touch and talk, approximately once a month, as my friends? Or should I consider my lab-mates as my friends with whom I am atleast 4 hours together daily? Or should I call my room-mates my friends? I get along with a couple of pre-formed groups…so which group should I consider to have my friends? Or should I consider my family, my parents to be my friends? So, let’s make it simple, all of them are my friends. Each and every individual I know is my friend. To hell with whatever it means.
