D2. FRIENDSHIP

FRIENDSHIP

Let me talk to you about Friendship. You must have heard a lot about it - and also given a lot of thought to it. What it should mean, what it should do and what it and friends can achieve, you may also have heard somebody say:
What is Friendship but a name,
A charm that lulls to sleep,
A shade that follows wealth and fame,
And leaves the wretch to weep.
Well different people behave differently and have different experiences. So with all this talk and knowledge you too may have felt confused and may also have felt Friendship is just a kind of lottery in life, only if you are lucky you get a friend who gives complete satisfaction. Examine, too, your own behaviour towards your friends of the past, in particular.
Well I am going to take the liberty to bring, to add, something!
"True friendship is of a royal lineage. It is of the same kith and breeding as loyalty and self-forgetting devotion, and proceeds upon a higher principle than even they. For loyalty may be blind, but friendship must not be; devotion may sacrifice principle of right choice, which friendship must guard with an excellent and watchful care. The object of friendship like that of love is to serve, not to win"!
The object of Friendship is not only to love but also to guard and guide, guide to ways of wisdom, and -
"If wisdom ways you wisely seek,
Five things observe with care,
Of whom you speak, with whom you speak,
And how and why and where."
You may perhaps have tried to be friends and have failed, failures may also be in other directions and matters, but let me tell you - "success in this world is rarely achieved but that should not deter you, for isn't the purpose of life - to chase success"? Put in other words, you should be physically and mentally in tune with the sentiments expressed here:
Though I do my best, I scarcely succeed,
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up and begin again,
So the chase takes up one's life; that's all.
We have digressed, so it appears, from Friendship to Life, and my considered advice is - "Let your life lightly dance on the edge of time, like dew on the tip of a leaf". Nay, I will go a step further and take you to the realm of the future and yet what always is "the present", and I trust you will agree;
"Every tomorrow has two handles, one can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith".
And I will add further;
"We should live for the future and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present".
And conclude that;
"The last is the only method of the first".
Perhaps you may be thinking that this all is too much for the grey matter in your cerebral region or too boring. But then let me assure you that;
"There is nothing so elastic as the human mind. Like imprisoned steam, the more it is pressed, the more it rises to resist the pressure. The more we are obliged to do the more we are able to accomplish".
So don't ever think that the tasks assigned to you by your friends are too many for you to tackle and all this too much for you to digest, and to end;
"HAPPINESS IS A HABIT CULTIVATE IT.
FRIENDSHIP IS A NECESSITY- CARE FOR IT"!!!!!!