Old Friends

Old friends are great. Especially friends from school, as they know us the best. They've been the longest friends with us. They understand us, and we do so as well. Question is, do we know how to keep them?

I went out with my friend (Lets call my friend 'N') the other day. 'N' brought some old school friends along and their relation was great. All of them are now studying at different places, but they still meet up frequently and kept in contact with each other. (Not to mention other 'gossips' about other people haha).

Even my sister, who is now in secondary school, still keeps in contact with her primary school friends. Of course, when she was 11 and 12, she already had a handphone and the luxury of internet, something that I never had at my disposal when I was her age. However, now that I think of it, it is kind of an excuse too. There are other ways to keep in contact with old friends when I was in primary school.

Some people learn early about keeping friends. As early as 13 years old, primary school friends who are separated will write letters to each other, will send greeting sms over the phone, and in this age, online chatting helps a lot in keeping friends together. Some people learn late however. In my case, I kind of regret that I didn't know how to keep in contact with my friends from primary school when I was in primary school. Only now am I trying to keep track of all of them, and it is hard too. Imagine doing something now that I should've done years back, only at that time I did not see the point of doing it. Good thing that my friends still remember me, and I still hang out with some of them.

As I stepped into secondary school, I can kind of see the point in keeping old friends. Not only as a place to get wild and free, keeping old friends also mean that there is a cushion in case we fall. In the long term when we are adults, our friends are the ones who are going to help reccommend us to the authorities for a job. Our friends are the ones who are going to tell us where to get a good job. Our friends might even open a business with us. They will be more than willing to help us because we were old friends. Bear in mind though, that I DO NOT encourage people to be friends only due to networking purposes. That is wrong, intentionally, because then we befriend people for an ulterior motive. Our niat must be in the right place, and that is something we have to figure out earlier on when becoming friends.

I am in uni now, and I hope to not do the same mistake I did in primary school. Seems a long way back, but the effects can last for a long long time. Lets hope then when we are all old, we are still going to have some old friends, so that we can laugh about the memories the same way we did a looooong time back. haha.