Conversations on friendship

Yesterday, after 7 eons - I met up with a friend from college who was passing through town. From the first wave across the roads to the last goodbyes - it seemed as if the conversation had never stopped. I was surprised by the number of "me too's" being said and exactly the topics of conversation being started which I would have wanted to talk about or had forgotten but now heard the same sentiments being echoed back - but I guess I shouldn't have been.

I am not sure if I would have left the same impression of friendship on my age-old friend as she did on me - but then everybody reacts differently - and similar things touch different people differently. Even when I call up somebody I was close to in under-grad, I feel as if we are just picking up the thread from where we had left off yesterday - it doesn't matter that since then we have walked different paths and aged differently and been through different life experiences or been moulded to different lives - it seems the bond of those four years during which we shared everything - joys, pains, sorrows - and grew from teenage hood to the next stage of hood (:)) through a brief four years - something cemented us together so strong - that years apart can't create cracks in it. I am not saying that I could just stop and pickup a conversation with each and every one of my under-grad classmates - but thinking back - it is funny how people with similar outlooks and perspectives just find each other in hostels - and there my friend, starts a bond for life.

The last few days I have been feeling alone in a crowd - since I felt connected and yet not connected - and hence maybe in a better position to observe and sometimes that is a lot of fun but also very lonesome.  I have been craving for friends the last few days - and yet through the week, I had the chance of meeting up with old friends and new - and for some aspect of my life have them say to me what I would have repeated to them about what I was feeling in the current situation or about the future or about careers or about life.

I was surprised at myself - at how dumb and without ideas I would go at one lunch conversation - to how dominating and non-stop talking I would go at the next. And it just seemed I reacted differently to when people seemed ready to accept me to when they showed that they didn't really care I existed - and the latter case just kept driving me nuts. There are no few instances of the latter actually, especially since I am in a foreign country - but I guess the trick is to just not care and "be yourself" (courtesy genie of the lamp to Aladdin :)). But I am digressing - I was talking about picking up lost threads of friendship and I strayed to wanting to recreate those connections again in my present life.

I was talking to Sarah, a friend I made at work here - and we were remembering when we really enjoyed our work and team and looked forward to what we were doing and contributing. Both experiences were when we were back in our home countries. :) I still recall hanging out with my colleagues (who were less colleagues and more friends) outside of work and having the most fun - connecting and bonding even though we were no longer in school,  from a closely scattered age group and experience. Our lunch conversations would be dominated by riddles, problems, mind-teasers, news discussions and we never ran out of topics to talk about. We never stopped picking on each other either. I wonder if that didn't inspire us to be our creative and productive best at work as well.

Sadly enough, I still wish for friends at work - knowing I will never get that back.  In this coutnry - people are so up in arms to give everybody else their work front - people feel work and friend life should be kept separate (even writing about work-friends actually makes me utter a critical laugh - it seems an oxymoron now - whoever heard of that - friends at your workplace). Not only that, I find the current culture is to be competitive and selfish at the cost of putting others down and stepping on others. Lack of security, willingness to succeed at any cost, be on the fast-track - I could probably name a number of factors behind this attitude but all it really does is foster a bad team-spirit, destroy trust, question abilities, drop the creativity meter to zero. I have heard people complain and berate the abilities of others behind their backs or subtly in front of them - but all it really speaks off is their inability to correctly tap into the potential of the person. And I myself have been a culprit to this a number of times. And yet, the people I most respect and admire in life - are those that are secure enough about themselves and those that I have seen try to bring out the best in others and in the effort bring out the best in themselves. But again I digress :) - this is becoming a habit of mine.

I don't expect things to change - but it saddens me that I can never again expect to make connections in life like I did in college - and start up a new thread. I miss friendly conversations which occur not as if we just met but as if we had known each other all our lives - I miss making friends I can just connect with and have them feel the same. I guess the trick is the connection - being lucky enough to bump into someone who is not your echo but it seems as if is trying to create the same echo that you are - albeit using a different word - if that makes any sense.
Even if I never run into such people again in life - at least I can still pick up my phone and call up my old friends and pick up that conversation thread we had lost 7 eons ago.