By PJ
I didn’t really have a perfect plan to lose my friends.
It just worked out that way.
When I sit and think about it, none of what happened can be ascribed to being entirely my fault. Some of the blame must fall on my friends’ heads also.
So, let’s start at the beginning and define who exactly are my friends.
The dictionary definitions of friends are:
- A person with whom one has a bond of mutual attraction. Typically, one exclusive of sexual or family relations.
- A member of the Religious Society of Friends. A Quaker.
- A friend on Facebook.
I think I can, in the main, ignore the last two as a friend on Facebook doesn’t, and in many cases isn’t someone I know, or particularly care about. The use of the word friend in this instance is a total misnomer designated by Facebook to make it seem a caring/sharing place.
The Quakers are a Religious Society, so friends is a generic name for those followers.
Okay then.
What then draws people together as friends?
Common interests, history, common values, and equality are normally the things that bind us to each other as friends.
Saying that—
What makes a friend worthy of the name?
- A commitment to your happiness.
- Not asking you to place friendship before your principles.
- Someone who is a good influence on you.
The Japanese have a word for friends like these: “Kenzoku,” which literally means family.
When you find such friends as these, they are priceless. They are like finding home.
Time and distance do nothing to diminish the bond we have in the truest kind of friendship such as this.
Gandhi said:
“Be the change you wish to see in the world. Be the friend you want to have.”
This can be a hard task to undertake. Friends can be annoying, irritating, time-consuming, and at times you wonder why the hell you are still friends with them.
Don’t ever forget, they will think the same about you at times.
I count myself as lucky to have five friends that I class as Kenzoku.
They are all people who have been in my life for over fifty years. Much of that time, our contact has been sporadic. Life, jobs, partners, and kids got in the way. But we all made the effort to stay in touch.
In one case, I hadn’t spoken to my friend for over forty years. Not much effort on either side there. We made contact again, and nothing had changed between our friendship over the years.
It was indeed like coming home.
In my life, I have had hundreds of acquaintances. Were they all really my friends? Difficult to say.
In the loosest definition of the word, I suppose they were friends. I never had a perfect plan to lose them though.
They just drifted away in different directions to the way our lives were progressing.
They were part of my life for a short while, and then either they or I moved on.
We all, I am sure, have similar stories to tell.
So, I lost all those friends without any planning at all.
Do I have a perfect plan to get rid of my Kenzoku?
Well, yes, I do, and it is indeed perfect. Nobody will blame me for their deaths, and I will get away with it Scot-free.
I did consider at first just shooting them all, but then of course, I would have to shoot myself because living without friends such as these, my life would not be worth living.
Not a particularly well-thought-out master plan, really.
My real plan, however, is perfect and very simple.
I intend to outlive them all.
© 2023 PJ
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“The Perfect Plan to Lose All of Your Friends” by PJ is a witty and thought-provoking reflection on friendship, loss, and the passage of time. Blending humor with deep introspection, this piece explores the nature of true friendship and ends with an amusingly dark twist.
