To my college Royal B Com class mates at NSS College, Nemmara
“Friends are
friends forever”
“A friend is
one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what
you have become, and still, gently allow you to grow (William Shakespeare)”.
It
was very easy for many of us to make friends when we were younger. We'd just
walk up to someone, get introduced, start talking, and new friendship was
created. During our college years, we became friends with classmates, college-mates,
sports team members, individuals who were in the different student
organizations, and students of different classes and batches. Those close
friends saw us through our studies in college.
After
graduation and moving out of town for either post-graduation or in search of
lively hood we found that making friends is infinitely harder. It's no longer
as simple as walking up to another person and asking them to be friends. While
that might have worked when we were in schools and college, it doesn't really
work after 25-years-old and definitely much difficult after 55 years-years-old.
As adults we have turned our focus onto careers, marriages, home lives,
families, children, and finally retirement plans.
Plenty
of new people entered our life, through work, new relatives, children’s friends,
and even through internet. But actual close friends, I will say are those made in
college, the kind you call in a crisis and close to our hearts as they grew
with us during our adolescence.
Friendships
will enrich your life and improve your health. Friendships are, at their
simplest, unions in which each person gets something of value from the other. Friendship
is a relationship of mutual affection between two or more people. One key to
friendship at any age is to find people who like to do similar things, think
alike, and who have similar values and circumstances.
What
friendship can bring?
Boost
your happiness and reduce your stress.
Improve
your self-confidence and self-worth .
Increase
your sense of belonging and purpose.
Help
you cope with traumas, such as divorce, serious illness, job loss or the death
of a loved one.
Encourage
you to change or avoid unhealthy lifestyle habits, such as excessive drinking,
obesity or lack of exercise.
Help
you in finding solutions to handle your sibling issues.
When
family responsibilities and vocational pressures become less, friendships
become more important. Among the elderly, friendships can provide links to the
larger community; especially for people who cannot go out as often,
interactions with friends allow for continued societal interaction. Seniors in
declining health who remain in contact with friends show improved psychological
well-being.
The
digital world today provides us opportunities to be connected with friends through
different mediums like Tele-talking, Text Messaging, Video/Audio chat, Email, WhatsApp,
Face Time, and many more.
We all will realize
that we have neglected to restock our pool of friends from school and college
when we encounter a big life event : RETIREMENT! It takes courage and
conviction for people to take the first step to re-establish the friendship of
college days.
Let us all try
to become closer, meet fairly often, keep in touch through Mobile and Internet,
enjoy good times together, and get to know each other on a deeper level.
Good friend-ship
will be there when life is hard to help uplift us as well to share in our good
times and successes to come.
MVR Menon
Mob: +91
9445333388
Email: mvrmenon@gmail.com
Comments
Raghuram A
Ramachan(MVR Menon)