Of Friendship and Adulthood

Recently, I'm head over heels with a musical movie titled Mamma Mia! In the movie, the friendship of the mother and her two friends lasts forever, even after one of the characters is dead. Years ago, I  wished I would find a friendship like that. I think it'd be nice having true friendship. I made a friendship with a lot of groups in different places, such as campus, communities, etc. However, either my expectation is too high or my mind has been romanticized by fiction, I feel a bit upset as the wish doesn't seems to come true. As I grow older, I lose friends one by one like a nature selection. We don't contact each other in a long time. Even if we do, our conversation feels flat. Then a question pops in my head:

Do we lose friends as we grow up?

Soon after your mid-20s, your social circle starts to shrink. It is a fact according to a recent study by scientists from Aalto University, Finland and the University of Oxford, England. So, it is a common fact that losing friends as we grow older is a part of the life cycle. However, accepting the fact that the bond between us and our friends are not the same anymore is quite sad. You will feel that it is very hard to schedule a meet up, very hard to gather just you and your friends (not with the significant others or children), very hard to call or text them just to say hi without making conversation flat. I think there are reasons why the friendship turns sour...

As we get older, we will have a lot of priorities, just like works, communities, family matters, etc etc. Every people will have different priorities. We and our friends will have different schedule, different cities, and different things to take care of. Sometimes, our mindset changes as we go through the process. Our thoughts will never be the same as before. So, it makes us searching for new friends who have the same frequency with us.

It's a sick sad world, I know. Just like what a poem titled AROUND THE CORNER by Charles H Towne says:

I suggest you to read the whole poem here. What depicts in this poem is true. It's about how the friendship disappears. Because life is a swift and terrible race, we sometimes forget to connect with our longtime friends. We're too busy to ask what they're doing or too busy to answer their calls/texts. As we get older, we will see friendships come and go and become more aware of the value of time. Despite the meaning of the poem, I love how the words creates such a wonderful sound devices called rhyme. It has a-a-b-b rhyme. The use of the sound devices makes the imagery in your mind. It gives the readers a melancholic feeling. Haha.. Sorry, I'll not go any further about the literature lesson. :D

Let's go back to the topic.


It's kinda sad to know that our lives and our longtime friends' lives turns flat anyway... I don't want to lose them though... In the end, what we need is not the large amount of friends that we have, but the quality of the friendship although we only just have several friends.