I've been thinking of these stuff for a few months now, mentioned them briefly to a few people while writing them bit by bit. I suppose since I have quite a fair bit of free time now, I'll write them down here.
Maybe I'm too much of an idealist, but I'd like to think that friendships can last through our lifetimes. I'd like to believe that the people we share our lives with now will continue to be by our side all the way. That we won't become more distant, but we'll only draw closer to one another. Yet as friendships come and go and this idealistic picture is repeatedly challenged, I stubbonly cling on to this belief.
Now we are growing older. We are entering (or perhaps rather have entered) into this phase of our lives where being called 'young men and women' isn't something people say to please us but has become a factual statement. We have added responsibilities, and the romantic relationships that people are entering into have moved beyond our schooling days of crushes and romantic fantasies into marriage and family.
I realise I can no longer believe it to be true. That while perhaps our friendships will continue, they can never be the same. The amount of time we spend together, the intimacy we have now will be lost. While as teens our friends may often tend to take priority over our families, now families (or families to be) take precedence over friends. Even though we are but at the starting phase of this phase of our lives, things are already changing.
A few years down the road would we still be talking about going on swings and sitting in large fields?
Its poignant. To recognise and accept that my idealism has to give way to pragmatism. That my dreams of the future are but vain hopes. And it comes to a point where now I daydream of travelling the world alone. Snapping up beautiful scenes of the summer bloom in hokkaido, the sakura showers of osaka in spring, the sun rising over the swiss alps. Beautiful scenes that create a pang in my heart because there would be no one to enjoy these sights with.
I told someone this and the person said I need a girlfriend heh. I find the thought that I would 'need' one rather silly.
Gone are the days where we strive to find cheap food and settling down at ananas cafe. We draw pay instead of allowance now, we dine in more expensive places and have better food. Yet, I kinda miss the days we would scrimp and try our best to save and in that sense 'suffer' together. Now scrimping just seems like being stingy.
Gone are the days where to be in a relationship was something juicy, perhaps even bordering on scandalous. Something whispered to others, where being a 'dectective' was something fun to do. Now it has become more of a norm, and the question has shifted from 'do you have' to 'when's your turn'.
To one particular friend, I remember when we were sixteen-seventeen, sitting in a dark alley alone we shared little secrets. More than two years later, you've moved from a point where it was something uncertain, something you weren't sure if you were ready to something that is a concrete reality. Time has flew us by, we have moved forward. I give thanks to God for what you have. It has transformed from something raw, heart burning emotions, to something beautiful.
I suppose that story is in a way true for many others too.
I'm looking forward and I see more things to come. As greater commitments pile up both in terms of relationships and outside of it, lives will drift further and further apart. All the same, I will be glad that our lives have crossed and we have indelibly changed each other's lives. I wish I could hold on to all that idealism, but I already find it all beginning to slip away.
I'm afraid the day will come where all this that is special to us now will become but a memory. Flipping through old albums on a virtual photobook, it will be the past. And maybe then we'll still meet, but we'll only come to be joyful and merry, not so real anymore. That distancing of five centimeters per second will have come to be miles wide, it will become like the difference between paper planes and rockets.
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