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What is a friend, and how to attain a true friend?
What are the prequisites, the basics to have a genuine true friend, and what is only like a causal acquaintance, temporary acquaintance, a passing phase, out of sight, out of mind fast?
There are 7.5 billion people on earth, but how many will we meet as casual or temporary acquaintances, and will it be in the thousands, or more than a million?
When we respect and accept those we meet as mere temporary or causal acquaintances, a passing phase of relationship, please at least do not hurt them. Give them your compassion, kindness and patience. Not all can.
Some will hurt one another or kill each other violently even those who are close to them, like those in a family, their loved ones. Some will become bitter enemies, and holding deep grudges. Some will not meet again, and will not attend each other’s funerals. Why hated is so bitter and deep even among loved ones in a family or among relatives?
Do humans know the cause and effect of hatred in a family when we talk about attaining a genuine and true friend, who is not even related by blood? What is the irony in this when humans hate one another so bitterly, while building up friendship with some who started as casual or temporary acquaintances?
Please do not turn a friend into an enemy. Please do not have enemies.
Life is fleeting and will pass on like a passing phase for everyone, like the passing of a cloud, gone in a moment. When we consider the number of years and days we have on earth to the billions of years of human existence, we should realise how shallow is our thinking, even among some of the super intelligent and the well educated.
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Rewritten by ChatGPT
What does it mean to have a real friend?
What do you need as basics to have a true friend, and what is just a casual acquaintance, a brief meeting, or a passing connection that quickly fades from memory?
With 7.5 billion people on Earth, how many people will we meet as casual or temporary acquaintances? Will it be in the thousands, or more than a million?
When you encounter people who are just temporary or passing acquaintances, treat them kindly and with respect. Be patient and compassionate. Not everyone can do this. Do humans know why?
Some people will hurt or even kill others violently, even those close to them like family members. Family members can become bitter enemies, holding deep grudges and sometimes never forgiving each other, not even attending each other’s funerals. Why is there such deep hatred among loved ones?
Do people understand the consequences of hatred in a family when we talk about finding a true friend who isn’t even related by blood? What’s the irony in humans hating each other while building friendships with others who start as casual acquaintances?
Please don’t turn a friend into an enemy. Do not have enemies.
Life is short and will pass by quickly, like a fleeting moment or a passing cloud. When we think about how many years we have on Earth compared to the billions of years humanity has existed, we should recognize how limited our perspective can be on life, even for some people who are considered the smartest and the most educated.
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When distance makes friendships more cherished
Some friendships falter when one party moves overseas. Others can be strengthened, if people make the effort to stay in touch.
Chua Mui Hoong
Senior Columnist
Friendship can be a love as strong as romance. In fact, many friendships outlast marriages. PHOTO: PEXELS
UPDATED APR 26, 2024, 05:52 AM in Straits Times.
I spent five days in Singapore recently, doing what every returning Singaporean does when they get home – catch up on food, friendships and family.
Since relocating to Perth a year ago, I’ve been easing into my new life. Western Australians are a friendly bunch of people and my social ties are broadening, slowly. Neighbours drop by often. People talk to each other – life stories are exchanged at the checkout counter; experiences traded at the hair salon. The Singaporean community in Perth is outgoing and friendly; and invitations for coffee and dinner are offered and reciprocated.
Even as my social life picked up in Perth, however, I found myself missing my Singapore friends and my Singapore life. One day, when my partner came back from meeting his buddies and recounted his day, I listened with an ache in my heart. When I probed that sensation, I identified the emotion – I was envious. Not because he was having fun with friends, or because he wasn’t spending time with me, but because my own friends were far away. “I’m jealous – because you can spend time with your old friends, but my own old friends are far away,” I said wistfully.
When the envy surged again a couple of weeks later, I realised I had to take action.
People who leave their hometown for life overseas all know they may lose touch with their friends, and grow distant from kith and kin. They fear becoming strangers in the land of their birth, if they do not take steps to maintain ties.
So I decided I would do my best to keep up with ties in Singapore. I resolved to spend time in Singapore every three or four months. The flight from Perth to Singapore is a short, comfortable five hours, after all, and very manageable a few times a year.
Which was how I found myself in Singapore recently, excitedly checked into a hotel near the city centre, my days chock-a-block with social engagements.
Catching up
In five days, I had nearly 20 appointments – with friends from school days, friends I’ve known for 30 years or three, friends from work, friends of friends, and with some new friends. Because friends know I’m in town for just a few days, they tend to be accommodating of my schedule. Some would travel near to my hotel and have coffee, or lunch, or dinner, nearby.
We caught up over kaya toast, chicken rice, bak chor mee, and cold crab, as well as over rosti, roast beef and vegan food. A shared love for local food lubricates friendships, and part of the joy of connecting with old friends is sharing a familiar favourite meal at a local food joint.
As I tore apart the flesh from a steamed cold crab with my fingers at Chui Huay Lim Teochew Cuisine restaurant with a family I know well, and as I savoured the pork liver and bak chor mee at Jin Xi Lai (Mui Siong) Minced Meat Noodles with friends, I found it hard to fathom where the comfort of being with old friends ends, and the sweetness of savouring familiar loved foods begins. In truth, many Singaporeans bond over food.
The fear of losing friends is common among people who work and live overseas. While we make new friends in our new home, many of us want to retain ties with friends we have known for years. With Singaporeans becoming more global, more of us will be affected by the ebb and flow of friendships as people move abroad for family or work, or to pursue different lifestyles.
I tend to think those of us who left have to work harder at maintaining ties than those left behind. When I schedule a video call with a good friend, I look forward to it for days and arrange my week, so I have the time and privacy to take that call. But I am also aware that the call could be a disruption in the schedule of my friends back in Singapore. It is not easy to make time or create space in a crowded apartment for an intimate chat with a friend in the middle of a busy work week while juggling personal, family or travel commitments – I’ve been on the other side of the call, so to speak, so I understand when friends need to reschedule, or when their attention is diffused during our chat. But when it works, those video calls work wonders at making people feel more connected – sometimes even more so than after face-to-face gatherings.
Apart from spending time with friends in Singapore, I also try to visit friends who have left Singapore to live abroad. Having a good friend somewhere creates the perfect reason for visiting that city.
Two years ago, while in Spain, I made an 800km detour and embarked on a road trip across three countries (Spain, France, Switzerland) to visit a friend living near Geneva. I got to know D and her husband in Singapore and we became fast friends. It was one of those friendships that sprang up fully formed – D and I had an intuitive understanding of each other from our first chat. I was heartbroken when she (and her husband) had to go back to Europe.
While in Geneva, I visited D and met her friends and mum, and had a glimpse of what life in French-speaking Switzerland is like, and saw how borders in some parts of Europe meant so little – ties of the tongue, of food, of family history, are fluid, and flow across nationalities. Although I had known her for some years, visiting D in her home environment helped me understand her better.
With budget travel, vacation time can become a means of strengthening friendships – visiting friends, or travelling together, to create new memories.
MORE ON THIS TOPIC
The fragile bonds of friendship
Understand friendships to understand loneliness
Group hug
I tell myself that friendships need not falter when one party moves away. When the bond is strong enough, the tie can be enriched, because being away often helps us realise how much the friendship means to us and makes us more determined to nurture it.
One blessing of being the sojourner, I realise, is that friends are more willing to make time to catch up, on the days when I am in town. I have friends from secondary school days who remain in close contact via WhatsApp. We share our lives, ask for prayers, and seek advice on anything from a roof leak, to getting a new TV, to skincare brands. We used to meet a few times a year, until Covid-19 halted our gatherings and the frequency dropped.
Since I moved to Perth, I’ve been back in Singapore twice – and we’ve met twice since, to coincide with the times I’m back in Singapore. So during a lazy Sunday morning recently, we spent two hours updating each other on our lives and families, and sharing our personal and work struggles.
Then we adjourned for the mandatory group wefie. This time, I added a request after our wefie: “Let’s have a group hug.”
Science tells us that talking and hugging are good for us, releasing a feel-good hormone called oxytocin, which is sometimes termed the “cuddle hormone”. Oxytocin makes people, especially women, feel happy and less stressed.
As I stood with my arms around my friends of 40 years, forming a circle in the middle of Somerset 313, ignoring the fashionable shoppers walking past us, I voiced the thought in my heart: “This is why I need to come back to see you all face to face, because a video call can’t do this.”
Ebb and flow
Articles on how to keep friends after moving abroad all suggest staying in touch digitally and keeping up with friends’ social media posts. Some also suggest going old school and using phone calls or sending a physical gift or handwritten and stamped letter, to stay in touch. These are all possible ways to maintain friendships.
Psychiatrist Chong Siow Ann, in an essay on “the fragile bonds of friendship” said that friendships help us cope better with life’s challenges.
“There is an ample body of psychological research that shows having social connections would, to a significant extent, help us live a longer, healthier and more satisfying life. Robust adult friendships of the sort that provide support and companionship significantly preserve our mental and physical wellness. On the other hand, people bereft of any close relationships are twice as likely to die prematurely – a risk factor even greater than the effects of smoking 20 cigarettes a day.
“Among other things, friendships protect us in part by changing the way we respond to stress. Blood pressure reactivity is lower when we talk to a supportive friend, or have a friend by our side while engaged in a tough task rather than working alone.”
MORE ON THIS TOPIC
Friendships amid the pandemic: Why reaching out to friends is hard to do
Friendship: It doesn’t have to be complicated
It is harder to make new friends in one’s adult years, which makes old friends all the more precious. Not all decades-long friendships weather well. People drift apart as priorities change, or feelings ebb. Others become distracted by busy-ness.
But for those that last, friendship can be a love as strong as romance. In fact, many friendships outlast marriages. Friendship can also give people crucial support that family may not provide.
Many people do not come from ideal, or even healthy families. Their parents may be warring, or immature. There may be infidelity. A child may be forced to keep secrets for one parent and lie to the other. There may be physical or sexual assault. Such abuse is probably more common than we realise – the above are all traits of families I know about.
For those who never experienced home as a safe place or family as safe people to be with, a genuine friendship in later life can feel like a sanctuary. In the calm affection of a trusted, safe friend, an adult with an inner wounded child can experience what safety feels like, and learn how it feels to care and be cared for. At its best, friendship can provide us safe harbours in the storms of life.
The sad reality though is that some friendships will fade as people move away. The sheer tyranny of distance – of time, and of space – means it will get harder for friends to find common ground when their daily lives diverge. So even as I do my best to maintain ties with friends in Singapore, a part of me lives in resigned sadness that some of those ties will fade with time.
But for now, while budget travel, health and means permit – a toast to friendship across borders, and all who work hard to maintain them.
MORE ON THIS TOPIC
Why can’t we be friends: Does having a baby ruin relationships with childless people?
How to travel together and still stay friends.
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Casual acquaintances. Nothing is permanent. Impermanence.
How many people out of the 7 billion on Earth will we meet, get to know, be friends, or be enemies in this physical life time? Many? A few thousands? 100,000? Or, more than 1 million?
Those in the family, and those whom we meet, are they many, and in the thousands?
Respect everyone as casual, as a passing phase, not ever lasting, and accept their behaviour, attitude, words and actions with compassion and kindness. Be one who will not judge them, or have friction with them.
They will come and go, here today, gone tomorrow.
Do not expect others to change before self.
Self can change by respecting and accepting that all around us are temporary acquaintances, and are casual. Respect, be accepting, and have no friction, as all will be merely a passing phase in one’s life. It is out of sight and out of mind eventually.
Some respect all as casual acquaintances, not easy to do so, and could offer them compassion and kindness even though they have been hurt by their attitude, words and actions.
There is no other way for one to live one’s life free of friction with everyone we meet if we do not respect all as casual acquaintances, or temporary acquaintances, who will not last for long during our short physical life span on Earth.
Nothing is static forever, not even the house you stay in, the time and space that you occupy everyday, the money you earn and spend, the material things that you have, the property that you own, the physical assets that you have, etc.
All are not there forever. No human life on Earth is there forever. It will end. It is casual, temporary in existence, though could be existential but temporary, it is not static and will not last forever.
Why the need to hold onto your material things when it is casual or temporary in nature?
Abandon your attachment. Nothing is forever. Your attachment is not permanent.
Why humans need to clash and create enemies when everything around them is casual, temporary in every sense of the word?
Even your family members are not permanent. Casual too. The family unit on Earth will end. Family members will disappear, and you will disappear.
There is no need to clash in the family among loved ones. Respect everyone no matter what.
It is only a passing phase in life, a very short or a temporary period of time in the span of one’s life on Earth.
All are casual and temporary in every aspect.
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Rewritten by ChatGPT
We meet lots of people in our lives, but most of them are just casual acquaintances. Only a few become close friends or enemies.
Even our families and the people we meet aren’t forever. Some people treat everyone as just temporary connections, casual friends, and they can still be kind to them, even if they’ve been hurt.
Nothing stays the same forever. Not our homes, not the time we live in, not our money or possessions. Everything changes, and life on Earth doesn’t last forever. It’s temporary and always changing.
So, why do we cling to things or fight with others when everything is temporary?
Abandon your attachment. Even our families won’t last forever. We should respect everyone, even if they’re family, because life is short.
In the end, everything is temporary.
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30th year kumite this month [27-March 1994- 27-March 2024], Goshugo Onrei Divine Protection Offering.
30th March 2024 at Singapore ShoSuken Dojo.
My sincere gratitude for Thy Blessings, Guidance, Protection, Arrangements and True Light for my family and me this month, our 30th year as Kumite. This is more than we deserve.
Billions on earth are strangers in their entire life. As for some 1000 in dojo, some are strangers too, or casual friends and acquaintances. By awakening, I must not cause unhappiness.
I judge others callously or indiscriminately with negative attitude, actions or words. I must change in humility to be stepped upon, and abandon my attachments. If not, ultimately I’ll be judged.
I am sorry for causing pain and unhappiness all these years. I have failed to accept God’s Will and that everything on earth is the Voice of God.
Grateful by these realization, I’m determined to positively change. Please allow me to grow spiritually with others.
Thank you very much.
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Rewritten by ChatGPT:
I want to thank you sincerely for all the good things you’ve given my family a Thank you so much for all the good things that have happened to me and my family this month, especially as we celebrate our 30th year together. I feel very grateful.
I know that many people on Earth live their whole lives without ever really knowing each other. Even among the one thousand of us in dojo, some of us are still strangers, or just know each other a little bit. I want to make sure that I don’t make anyone unhappy by being insensitive.
Sometimes I’ve been too quick to judge others and I’ve said or done things that hurt them. I realize now that I need to change, to be more humble and let go of my attachments. If I don’t, I’ll be judged too.
I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused over the years. I know now that everything that happens is part of God’s plan. I’m grateful for this realization and I’m determined to change for the better. Please help me to grow spiritually alongside others.
Thank you very much.
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.In my FaceBook:
30th year as Kumite.
Thank you so much for all the good things that have happened to me and my family this month, March 2024, especially as we celebrate our 30th year as Yokoshi.
I feel very grateful.
I know that many people on Earth live their whole lives without ever really knowing each other. They do not clash because billions do not meet at all, and they remain as strangers for life.
Like the billions on Earth, even among the one thousand of us in dojo, although some of us are still strangers too, while some would know each other a little bit more.
We are casual friends or acquaintances.
I want to make sure that I don’t make anyone unhappy by being insensitive or due to my impatience.
It is not necessary among the 1000 we meet casually to cause unhappiness with one another, as we can avoid hurting each other sensibly.
Some are casual friends, some strangers, and some only passing acquaintances, nothing more. Some will forget each other fast, as it will be out of sight out of mind.
Sometimes we have been too quick to judge others mostly due to ego, impatience and being high strung. Me too.
I’ve said or done things that hurt others unnecessarily. I realize now that I need to change, to stop it. Now, i have realised that many we know or meet in life are only casual acquaintances, a passing phase in life never to meet again.
I have to be more humble toward others, and abandon my attachments. If I don’t, ultimately I’ll be judged too, and more severely, and spiritually.
I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused others over the 30 years. I know now that everything that happens is part of God’s plan, that everything on earth is the Voice of God, and I have to accept God’s Will as well.
I’m grateful for this realisation, and I’m determined to change for the better.
All have to go through the waves and nodes in life. Many do not know the purpose. Sadly, some siblings clash, and become bitter enemies for life. Some even kill one another.
Please help me to grow spiritually alongside others in my contacts with only a small number of us when there are billions whom, I as well, will never meet or know.
Thank you very much.
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Rewritten by ChatGPT:
30 years of Kumite.
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Thank you for all the good things that happened to me and my family this March 2024, especially as we celebrate our 30th year as Yokoshi.
I feel really thankful.
I know many people on Earth never really get to know each other. They stay strangers because billions of them never meet.
Even among the thousand of us in the dojo, some are still strangers or barely know each other.
We’re just casual friends or acquaintances.
I want to make sure I don’t make anyone unhappy by being insensitive or impatient.
We don’t need to hurt each other among the thousand of us we casually meet.
Some are just casual friends, strangers, or passing acquaintances. Some we might forget quickly.
Sometimes we judge others too quickly because of ego, impatience, or being high-strung. Me too.
I’ve said or done things that hurt others unnecessarily. Now I realize I need to change and stop it. Many people we meet in life are just passing acquaintances.
I need to be more humble and let go of my attachments. Otherwise, I’ll also be judged, spiritually.
I’m sorry for causing pain to others over the 30 years. Now, I understand everything that happens is part of God’s plan, and I need to accept it.
I’m grateful for this realization and determined to change for the better.
We all have ups and downs in life.
Please help me grow spiritually with the small number of people I know, even though there are billions I’ll never meet.
Thank you very much.
tankoktim 