Friends

Life has been quite fair to me- giving me what I have really asked for and sometimes much more than that. Life has also given me a sense and an understanding that seems to be on an overdrive on the act reflection- the numerous times I reflect on my life makes me far from being a man of today. Indeed, it scares me sometimes that I dwell far too long in the past, thus spoiling this present called today. That however is not my intended topic today.

Today, I feel like dwelling on how people change with time, specifically how friends change with time. I have seen carefree friends turn cynical, loving friends turn bitter, bitter friends give up their contorted view of life and embrace happiness, I have seen friends ego bared raw, seen friends' real character emerge as they go through their life events. Its made me sit up and notice things. It hurts seeing people judge you wrong just because their perspective has changed. I haven't changed a bit man, I am still the same non-serious, confused guy from before, the guy who just loved sitting and talking random with you, perhaps in the hope from some random thought he could figure out some direction to his life. I don't want to change who I am, I wont change who I am. What has changed is that you are unable to deal with your life and its frustrations and challenges, you indirectly direct it at me. I am sick of all this, sick of seeing my friendships turn into painful relations that need application of infinite amount of thought and rearrangement of feelings.

Even I have my frustrations, even I have painful memories, I have days when I feel like just shutting out the world, shutting myself out. There are days when I feel like jumping up with joy and doing ten million things before I fall asleep. I go through phases when I just haze through my days, sleeping like a log for dozens of hours at end feeling depressed at not doing much constructive and effectively wasting my hours away. I fear I will never make it big in life, the fear pushes me to embrace loneliness, it pushes me to lose track of what should be done at the present to make my future a little more bright. Everyone has problems, so do I. But I have never mistreated a friend because of my mood swings.

I don't wish to change to become like the paranoid, cynical people around me. I can see perfectly normal people giving up their level headedness to fall into convenient drawers of classification of human nature: egoistic, cynical, cribbers, over-friendly, kiss-ass, full of hatred, bashful, greedy, overzealous into religion and spirituality (read drugs), hardliners, free world utopian idiots, tech freaks who would rather spend a night with their ipod than with their friends. All of them were someone whom I could describe to a stranger in a clear, confident voice as- there, thats my friend, no one word is resolute enough to describe him or her, come experience them yourself, see them for the joy they are. Its saddening to see such great souls lose their path in the forest and head off into the darkness, fueled by their twisted sense of the present and the future. 

I am going to be successful without all this. Its one thing to be successful, its another thing to become successful as a person that you never were, a victim of dogma, circumstance, the world, whatever.