The Food of Friendship

To take the term, “International Friendship Day” literally as an international student at IMU, it means that my friends are indeed overseas.

It was only after moving abroad to Malaysia to study that I realise the value of friendship as a manifestation of your personal values, morals and ethics. The metaphysical bond between you and your friend isn’t tangible, yet it remains an embodiment of your similarities and mutual care.

When you’re physically separated from your true friends whom you trust, whom you confide in and who mean something to you, you learn the gravity of those 6 letters. It is easy to belligerently throw the term “friend” around in regards to people we may not have any emotional bond with. This is a result of Zuckerberg’s idea of Facebook friends – revolutionising the implication of the term “friend” in itself. It’s mistaken for knowing someone, rather than caring for someone.

After frequenting visits to Australia, I essentially prioritised which friends I would have the time to see and which friends didn’t make the cut. Some might consider this approach emotionless or primitive, others pragmatic, but it filtered through what I call the “Zuckerberg zone” and distilled my social circles to those people who enhanced the experience of life. They were constant but never in the forefront and it wasn’t obvious who those people were until now.

It was through this I learned that the mutual trust and solidarity that exist between real friends are unbreakable nexuses of connections beyond our conscious reasoning, and often we must allow time or physical barriers to reveal what connections withstand compromise. After all, one can only test the strength of something by making it susceptible to breakage.

Ultimately, friendship is manifested through intrinsic bonds of camaraderie; they’re not apparent but they are powerful. Without bonds, salt wouldn’t be able to form a crystal lattice and season your spaghetti. Imagine a world without seasoned spaghetti. Horrific. Coming from a girl who’s physically separated from her lifelong friends, let’s remind ourselves that we have the privilege of making friends that add flavour to the dish of our lives, enhancing the experience.

That’s the food of friendship.

P.S. I apologise for reducing my friends to salt in an analogy, love y’all!