Frankly Put: Friend Circles and Cycles
Many things can be said about friends and how they have an influence on your life. They say, “Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are”, “You are the sum of your closest friends” and so on and so forth. But how far can you go in collecting pieces of others before you are no longer yourself?
While it may be true that iron sharpens iron and all other beautiful sentiments that aunties share on Facebook and WhatsApp, there is one that I have really been taking in every year and holding on to. It isn’t particularly focused on friends. In fact, it is generally all relationships in life. “People come into your life for a season, reason or a lifetime,” the saying goes.
In some ways, that saying has found space as a mantra in my life and I don’t particularly hate that it has, at least when it comes to friends. Of course, this is with the overarching understanding of friendship management systems. (credits to Eli Mwenda from Mantalk.ke) This also isn’t really coming from a place of I wish I knew better in my past life or anything of that sort, more so from a place of gratitude.
I’ve come to draw parallels between friendship and life. Friendships just like life, come in cycles. They are born (strangers meet), they grow (gain depth and intimacy) and unfortunately die (strangers again). Admittedly, they both deserve their own celebrations and grieving processes regardless of how they came into and left this world.
Sometimes, I like to sit back and simply observe the interactions of different friend groups. Admittedly, I still occasionally falter in making observations without forming opinions or confirming assumptions. Either way, the effort is made to simply watch the dance in the interaction between people and it is so beautiful; this dynamic between two individual beings.
I am particularly a fan of the two extremes, people in their joy and people in their sorrows because I suppose that they can be the thermometer of the real depth of friendships. How people interact at those levels can be a real show of human nature and more specifically their nature. Human interactions really aren’t a straight line and to see them as such is to rob them of their uniqueness.
History has me burnt from trying to involve myself in people’s manner of interaction and I still carry the scars. I remember the experience like it was yesterday even though this “yesterday” was nearly five years ago. That experience probably shifted my own prerogative on friendships the most and how they are tailor-made for the people involved in them.
Lately, I’ve been tackling a reflection on “adult friendships” and the common mentalities that come with it. There are still things like “We should definitely meet” then not doing so, that I am ever so slowly creeping towards hatred for but that’s besides the point. I compare that situation to the current one on the ground. I call myself out on how badly I handled that situation but at the same time, I give myself the grace to understand where that came from. In the introspection of that, I have found “friend circles” beyond friend cycles.
Often, as a young one trying to catch the train on what was cool, trying to stay relevant, trying to fit in, I don’t think I fully came to understand what friend circles were. I saw it, at the time, as “this is your assigned clique and you can only really interact with these select people.” The fact that I didn’t have the fullness of the one trait that brought them together, caused this rift in fully investing in the circles that existed back then.
What did that mean for me? Well, it meant striding through my younger years like a tangent to friendship circles because there wasn’t room in the groups for lukewarm. Then came secondary school where it was like learning how to make friends anew and better yet, getting to the point of redefining what circles meant to me. Suddenly, I could draw Venn diagrams of friend circles.
At that meeting of the various circles, I made a home and place of comfort. Getting to the aforementioned situation, I learnt that sometimes that space in the middle of the Venn diagram is unstable. Sometimes, circles have the ability to repel each other and when they get to the point of crashing into each other, they only leave you picking up the pieces they smashed you into in the collision.
Joining university came with a new appreciation of friendship circles. My myopic vision had been corrected to see relationships beyond just in front of my nose. It is in fact possible to have a large circle drawn around several circles and you form a homestead of yourself. Just like a homestead, as more people come in it is possible for them to openly have their own circle within and still feel like they belong. Still, people can move out, peacefully so.
I think that is in essence what people seek. That space to feel like you belong and ideally what that means is finding a place you are understood. I mean, without understanding it is difficult to find belonging, it is like they walk hand in hand. At the end of the day, I think the place that feels most homey is the one where you are understood to the point of acceptance.
All this to say, I think in some ways being able to step outside a circle helps you understand the circle, the cycle and its dynamics a little better. Might I also say, it helps you understand yourself a little better and then understand your friends better and then understand… well you get the picture. I guess you could say that is another friend cycle, if you are the sum of your friends…
If a friendship has a lifecycle, then I can safely conclude that it has two important days; the day it is born and the day you find out why. Come season, come reason, come lifetime, those two days are constant, to put it Frankly.
