Nehemiah Rong
A young child needs a companion so also an old grandmother. From the early days of one’s life till we grow old one needs a companion, someone to talk with, to share joys, passions, sorrows, jokes, thoughts, minds, wealth, reflecting together past stories and enjoying the good times together while consoling and conquering the bitter ones. Wiping and shedding the tears together, helping and sharing the treasure together, learning and living together. In true friendship one finds those moments and qualities. Here are thoughts and minds of philosophers, politicians, Christian Apologist; legends of our older folks and common people, who spelled about the beauty, value and the passion of friendship.
Plato in his work Lysis, or Friendship (380 B.C.E.) as translated by Benjamin Jowett writes, “I have a passion for friends….I should greatly prefer a real friend to all the gold of Darius, or even to Darius himself: I am such a lover of friends as that.”
In the book ‘Never Stop Running’ and the ‘Struggle to save American Liberalism’, author William H. Chafe recorded a note written by the Douglass Hunt to Allard Lowenstein. Here it goes, “Friends achieve that intimacy of thought which enables them really to say what they mean to each other. Sometimes, each gets a glimpse of what’s going on in the mind of the other. Sometimes, even though each dislikes what the other occasionally does, two friends develop forbearance…. of sympathy, understanding and kindness. There is intellectual delight in such companionship- embracing as it does the noblest in both friends. And there is a warmth of heart and compassion of spirit which one encounters nowhere in the whole world. If I were to dream of a best friend, it would be someone like that.”
“One of the treasured gifts of God in life is the gift of friendship. This gift comes as His grace because I have seen it manifested even when the recipient is undeserving. Over the years I have traveled and sat at meals with people around the world, I have carried away with me this beautiful gift. On every continent I have memories, enriched beyond measure, of some friend who at some time shared with me the gift of hospitality. When feelings are down and the road seems desolate, it is the friend who carries us along…. Through life or by death, a friend can help conquer many a wrong and petty feeling.” Thus writes Dr.Ravi Zacharias, Christian Apologist and Philosopher in his book Cries of the Heart.
In regard to our Naga society, as told by the older folks, there is a post harvest festival every year, where every lad must find his best friend and every lass her best friend or companion. To mark the ties of friendship, exchange of brew jar and meat of domestic animal was done. After this ceremony of mutual agreement, they become close companions and have every role and obligation like a kinsman. ‘One may fight with his brothers but one can never lay a hand on his best friend and his sons’, such was an obligatory duty between friends. Be it in the feast of merit, inauguration of a newly constructed house, a marriage ceremony or in death rituals, the best friend’s presence is mandatory and must partake in rites and rituals. Going by the oral narration, in the feast of merit when a bull or buffalo were butchered for the feast, the performer of the feast gives the lung portion and the tip of the heart to the best friend.
One day a young rich son asked his father on what he could do with his wealth? The old wise man replied that he was not rich enough yet. The father advised his son to try to store a barn of rice in each village of his area. The son replies: “Dad how can I go and cultivate rice in each village of my area which is so vast?” The wise man said, “Son! You find a friend in each village of your area then wherever you go you will not be hungry and out of home but you will be richer and secure”.
A Sumi friend once penned down these words in my diary book way back in 1999: “Friendship is like a Rare Flower that Grows not in Every Heart”. A SMS sent by a friend from Shillong goes like this: “A friend is someone who sees the 1st tear in your eyes, holds the next one and makes sure that the 3rd one never comes out”. “Friendship is a promise made in the heart… silent…unwritten…unbreakable by distance…unchangeable by time.” A middle-aged man revealed that friends were those who help us in our needs and mutually work for the progress of the both.
Friendship is not the absence of conflicts and differences. But it is a willingness of the two wills, the fusion of two hearts, the meeting points and mutual agreement of two minds, and the clash of the two passions. Friends are timeless treasure, precious than gold, more worth than money and an endless joy.
When we can build true friendship with perfect understanding,
We start to see things beyond riches, wealth, fame and beauty.
We are ready to meet a person in one’s grandest attire and one’s most shabby dress.
We are ready to meet a person in times of happiness and distress.
The spirit of true friendship is the matter of mind and heart as well.
Sometimes we wonder how we find such a good friend when we are not in search and sometimes we walk away dejected finding none when we search so hard.
May be that’s why after much argument and discussion Plato in Lysis ends with these words, ‘and as yet we have not been able to discover what is friend!’
Sometimes, somewhere we meet such a precious soul and we wonder what if we don’t meet that person in our life? We have a sense of gratitude and wonder. Friendship comes to us as a miracle and mystery and as a gift of God indeed.
