Good Friendships

A sincere friend is one who gives without expecting anything from you in return. Sincere friendship allows people to embrace and accept each other’s differences and use them to enhance their relationship and allows the freedom to be your unique self. Sincere friendship is built on a foundation of trust and safety. Friends connect on a regular basis via phone or meeting up, knowing you can always turn to each other in a time of need and that you have a safety net for your deepest secrets. Sincere friendship allows the expression of ideas and opinions while growing and learning from each other.

Most people think that friendships are competitions and many will try to buy friendships, give gifts and entertain people, all along annoying those who cannot do so and this is where the envy begins and the judgmental character of the human being comes out. 

Many sincere friendships have been formed in the past months. An essential thing to know about friends is their quality and not the quantity. Throughout my six decades, I have come to terms with the many so-called friends I have had or thought to have had and have realised that most were nothing but an insincere group of people who hung around to pick what they could and then fly away. Nevertheless, I harbour no grudges as I have learned from all of them.  One of the best things, for me, about this pandemic is the dropping of the habit of hugging or kissing or embracing each other or shaking hands, a western culture picked up by us pseudo–European Colombo types, every time we met.

Chatting with Trixie about sincere friendships, she laughed aloud and said it was an exceedingly rare phenomenon in Colombo. Vipers have more loyalty than most people in Colombo was her take. It all stems from envy and jealousy; people in Colombo especially cannot bear to see the success of others, everything annoys them about other people and it all arises from not being happy with one’s self. Most people think that friendships are competitions and many will try to buy friendships, give gifts and entertain people, all along annoying those who cannot do so and this is where the envy begins and the judgmental character of the human being comes out. We live in a city where individuals enjoy other people’s hospitality and then tear and condemn them to shreds as soon as they are out of sight. Trixie was happy to say that she has a handful of friends who she can talk to about anything and everything and knows that she will neither be judged nor condemned and that the conversation will not be repeated. ‘Do try to be a sincere friend,’ Trixie said, ‘or else have nothing to do with them instead of whinging about them all the time.’

‘If you have only two sincere friends consider yourself lucky as at the end of the day all that we have with us, possessions, wealth etc., is of no use because we leave them behind when we depart from this world.  Treasure your sincere friends and boot the rest to the garbage,’ is Trixie’s good advice.