Change the way you see friendship

When you think winning a friend could be that easy as sharing a seat with a complete stranger, or can be bought from somewhere then we could go on believing that we will never feel incomplete, lonely, or weary with the idea that we can find it anywhere and anytime we need it. We could easily appreciate every people we meet and eventually accepting some to become part of our lives for the sake of companionship. I was defining friendship at its simplest form, a mediocre kind of relationship but not until I came up with an astounding realization from this kind of bond I found from my College friends.

I had this thought since I was in high school that the kind of friendship everyone deserves to have is the kind where one must never feel down and that kind of having a person who will always be by your side literally or figuratively whenever someone tries to go against you. Every person I meet, I try to adjust with how they treat me. I try to be one of whoever I am with believing they could appreciate me more if I behave the same way they behave. This thought I had has changed and learned that real friendship is tested with the authenticity of souls who were always available for each other in any kind of situations.

I have been blessed when I met this bunch of amazing persons.

Being a transferee, it is really proven that you’ll experience challenges during the adjustment period to a new environment full of different people. You get intimidated and don’t know who to approach whenever you missed any stuff in your class like a particular update from the last lesson, upcoming exams and deadlines of critical projects. I am innately an introvert person and it really took me a while to learn how to initiate small talks to people. I sometimes don’t know how to express what I really want to say to people so I tend to suppress some of my emotions most of the time.

Year of 2010, I was in my 2^nd year college from my second university when I started to get along with different circle of friends that has been already established before I transferred there. Some will invite you to join them over lunch and there were also some loners like me who’ll call you to have some chitchats and get to know you more. I am not into groups actually and I had myself conditioned that time that I will just stick to few real people who’ll be able to bring out the best in you, uplift you, and never back stub you.

Then weeks and months had passed, I found myself slowly getting attached to this new formed circle at first I never thought of becoming part of. Neither of us.

Let me share the profile of these 4 wonderful human beings I am grateful to have with and how each of us have touched each other’s lives in the past 6 years and continuously doing it for each other.

I’ll start with Richelle. She is our “Ate” who we all depend our needs when it comes to advises regarding life experiences. Admittedly, she had the most experience when it comes to family matters through her battles with different chaos she had to face on the earlier years before we met. I can still remember the very first day we talked and got too comfortable with each other that we eventually opened up and shared our life stories to each other. She is already married that time after she got pregnant but unfortunately had a miscarriage. She shared with me how she loses not only the baby but also herself believing she could no longer have the chance to become a mother. Being not that great impromptu adviser, I just told her to have faith and wait in God’s perfect time and believe everything happens for a reason. Ate Richelle is a kind-hearted person and an easy-to-get-along-with type of a friend. What made her inspiring is that she is very resilient in life. She can stand any obstacles and pursues to conquer any kind of battles.

Then Ate Richelle introduced me to Lalyn. She and Lalyn has been together as buddies for quite some time before I met them. Lalyn and I cracked the ice with our same sense of humor. I found my bubbly self in her where we found ourselves spending most of our time giggling over things from nonsense to more nonsense stuff. Opposite of my first impressions of her not taking serious of things, Lalyn is a very studious person and I can label her as the achiever in the group. As long as I get to know her more, I find how serious she is when it comes to her values and principles in life. She is always determined to keep what she believes in and has patience in waiting for all the good things that are about to happen in life. We both believe in serendipity and this I guess is one of the reasons why we got to connect with Hazel.

Hazel occasionally join Ate Richelle and Lalyn the time I met the three of them. We were already starting to have lunch together and spend time talking about everything under the sun. I guess most of the reasons me and Hazel able to start a connection is the part where we talk a lot about our views when it comes to dating and relationships. Definitely, Hazel was my girl-talk buddy in College. We share to each other almost all of our love stories from heartbreaks to heartfelt moments we had with our previous relationships. With our ups and downs, I can relate my life experiences mostly with Hazel. We were both a working student and when it comes to decision-making, one of the dearest people I look up to is Hazel. She is a cheerful driven-person careful with her life plans. Hazel and Anne were the two individuals I share heartfelt conversations with.

I first encountered Anne the following year. I remember she was with other set of friends but most of those times I noticed her not regularly being with a specific group and I had the impression she also prefers to be alone like me. A lot of our batch mates tell us we look alike that some of them mistakenly call us by swapping our names. I admire her strong-will and determination about her passions. She is a driven-person who always lend a helping hand to any one and being admired by many because of her inspiring activities in life. She is also a born-again Christian like me who actively participates in different kinds of life/Christian group in their community and even in our campus. We jokingly tag each other as twins not only because of our physical features but also because of our same experiences and fate when it comes to dating and relationships. Anne later on started to spend time and get along with us.

We all eventually had a connection we surprisingly found with each other. As the famous saying reiterates, “Birds with the same feather flocks together” -this didn’t sink in us completely as we have our own unique traits, different interests and passion, and past experiences. I came to realize that a perfect mixture of a strong bond results from having the same values in life. It is not only based on having the same type of fashion sense, food you like to eat, or genres of music and type of movies you are fond of. Friendship is a type of connection we all must take deeply and seriously. We can get along to any set of friends in the different stages or phases in our lives but we must never forget to choose who we invest a great deal of relationship. Friendship must perhaps become a synonym of family. Something that you must be proud of having and not bragging only to show you are not left out in the scene.

Graduated from the same bachelor’s degree, we differently followed a career path in Psychology and in life choices. Ate Richelle is now residing in Virginia, USA with her husband and adopted a baby. Lalyn graduated Cum Laude and pursued her career in the academe as a Guidance Counselor. Hazel just got married last July of this year and have plans of opening a business. Anne is now a teacher for Teach for the Philippines and is still actively involved in some outreach programs. I pursued a career in the corporate setting specifically in Human Resources and currently continuing my passion in writing.

Every December, we celebrate a friendship anniversary for us to reminisce, reflect and catch-up with each other. How we started our friendship were all unplanned. I can say friendship is as same as looking for your soulmate too. Whenever one needs support and guidance, we are on full-force to uplift that person. We were there in the airport when Ate Richelle was about to leave for U.S., we were all in support for Lalyn’s run for Cum Laude, we were present witnessing Hazel’s wedding in Bukidnon (except for Ate Richelle), and just recently we participated in volunteering for Anne’s involvement with Teach for the Philippines outreach program.

 

Our friendship goals differ as years passed by. From college days, wishing we will all graduate on time and achieve the right career path, from our professional status hoping to become successful and overcome quarter-life crisis, and up to this stage that we’re now busy preparing our lives aiming to have the life we have always wanted. Get married, open a business, end frustrations of our long-time passions and live boldly.

One of the great things we are thankful for are the best moments that we were able to capture either through lenses of a DSLR or from our outdated camera phones back when we were in College. We are admittedly guilty of taking selfies and conscious with how we will appear and what we will post to our social media accounts. We give so much value to photos because we believe this is the best treasure we can have as evidence of our wonderful moments together.

Good thing Huawei P9 with Leica camera was created. With its 5.2-inch, 12-megapixel specs, we can now take selfies and lessen our worries with the quality of our photos. We can confidently post them immediately to our social network accounts without further fix and filters.

Thought Conclusion

Embracing each other’s differences in life and understanding what makes the other person high or down are the ultimate secrets to lasting relationships. We are created with different imperfections too. It will take some time for us to improve ourselves but the moment we find the right people who possess qualities that are perfect fit with our incompleteness in life, we’ll be able to feel fulfillment we thought we can never get from other people. Friendship by all means is a kind of bond that is essential. Something you instinctively treasure for in a lifetime.

Written By: Hannah Dani