True friendship: no cheat codes

Are you familiar with the wonderfully hearth-warming, deeply philosophycal novella "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery?

Short story even shorter, The Little Prince lives on a small planet the size of an asteroid where he takes great care of his beloved rose - the first and only rose The Little Prince has ever seen. One day, he enters a rose garden on Earth and, after realizing all these flowers are roses, starts crying- did he live and love a lie?

Because "his flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe. And here were five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden!". However, just in this moment a voice from under an apple tree says "Good morning!". The voice belongs to a fox that teaches The Little Prince a secret - that friends need to be tamed first. And that taming takes time. Armed with this new knowledge and confident in his rose being truely special, The Little Prince turns back to the rose garden:

"[...] she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars [...]; because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

Original watercolor painting from the book

You have to take your time for friendships to emerge. And you have to take your time for friendships to flourish.

The other day a friend of mine apologized for not responding to my messages. Kinda. To cite her, "Sorry I didn't write sooner. I was occupied with myself". She did not mean harm. And she did not mean it in an I-was-totally-depressed-and-something-really-fucked-up-happened way but in the sense of I-am-alive-and-life-is-going-as-always.

My friends excuse screamed sorry I ain't sorry. Not for the first time. I got really mad because my monkey mind run wild assuming all kinds of things. For example that she thought I was dumb, or at least dumb enough to buy into such a plain scheme. I sensed how contempt got mixed into my anger. Explicit gangsta rap language filled my consciousness.

Under this hot, self-righteous, suffocating feeling was my pain of being in an one-sided friendship. This pain of denying all clues, not wanting to accept that she is not the friend to me that I am to her. Or the friend, I wished for myself and that I still wasn't to myself.

My fury did not outlast this realization. Because I remebered the truth of our comon human reality.

Which is that we all have done this on some occasion, we all are in the same boat. I have weaved some pretty plain schemes myself. For the sake of (fake) harmony. Because it was the easiest thing to do. Because I wanted to save face. Because I thought the other wants to hear it. Because I didn't want to hurt her or him. Because I had a habbit of lying. Because of social norm. Because I wasn't ready to let go.

Still. Obviously we ALL are constantly occupied with ourselves and with the things that seem important to us right now. There is some kind of individual, conscious or uncoscious, internal importance hierarchy in action when I don't answer a short question from my freshly dumped best friend Annie but compose a milelong WhatsApp message to that boy I met on saturday.

And you know what? This is, in itself, ok. I don't mean in terms of sustainable friendships or morality or social norms or you name it, but in terms of freedom of choice. We HAVE TO SET PRIORITIES due to our finite temporal ressources. If we are wise, we KNOW what our long-term priorities are. In this way we can actively direct our reccources - energy, attention, time, kindness, support - towards things that are important to us, for example friendships.

We have the choice how we invest our time and it is completely legitimate to exercise our freedom of choice. Of course, we have to face the concequences in doing so. Freedom of choice does not mean freedom from consequences. Having the freedom to choose your action does not mean there won't be any consequences that you don't like. Freedom of choice implies choosing the consequences.

The friendships we invest our time and energy in become important to us. Not the other way around.

So what did my friend choose? She chose to not be there when I needed her the most, she chose to use flimsy excuses about why she did not, she chose to prioritize other people and things above quality communication with me, she chose to say "sorry I ain't sorry" as a way to cope with my letting her know what I needed from her.

In a way, this goes to show me that for one reason or another she wants to sustain the relationship. She, just like me, doesn't want the relationship to change. She wants to keep things in harmony. Or she doesn't want to hurt me. Or is not ready to let go.

Seems to me that she wants the benefits of my friendship without putting the energy into it that is needed to keep intimacy and the feeling of mutual commitment. A high-risk, high-reward strategy. If it works out.

So what do I choose?
I choose to accept a couple of things. That things are the way there are. That I maybe will never understand why we drifted apart. Because I can ask people questions. I can show affection. I can be understanding. But I can't make people talk to me about their authentic feelings. I can't make them priorituze me.
I accept that love is infinite. I accept that my time on this precious plane of existance is limited. I choose to be grateful for this friendship and for the lessons it thought me. I choose to let go of my expectations on AND the priority of this friendship.

Because while love can be unconditional, exclusive relationships are not. There are no cheat codes in true friendship. Or do you tell a flower that is withering in the merciless sun to postpone dying until you stop being occupied with yourself?