Friends

Yesterday, I met with a very good friend of mine. We also met up with a very good friend of my husband's - friend, wife and child.

It is interesting how friends mean different things and relationships grow.

My friend was moving out of the city. I ought to have been sad. Though we don't meet often, we are quite close and will miss at least the feeling that we cant meet whenever we want.
But I am excited as I hear her plans for moving. She is planning to move away from urban life to semi urban and then to rural life. She is idealistic, yet has a way of being realistic of her position and living her ideals. I am excited about this experiment of hers in her life. Quite an adventure. I want to learn about it through her. (Maybe I will do it sometime later in my own life, once I have figured what I want to do with my life)

On the other hand with the other friend or ours, though we are much more in touch with them, our plans for lives seem so different. While we are keen in achieving something in life, they seem to be keen on raising a family and enjoying a good family life. Their life revolves around their child and ours around our work. There seem to be few common topics.

In both cases, this 2 sets of friends - me and my friend, my husband and his friend, became friends when we shared a lot of common things - problems, goals, ideals. But over the years , we have grown. We have all grown in our own individual ways which take us towards different directions. Our desire of enjoying each others company seems to depend on how we share our ideas and more importantly how we listen to each other and support each other.

While I and my friend differ in what we want for ourselves in life, we are intrigued by each other's experiments and support in this process of experimentation. I am not keen on having children (as of now), she adopts a child out of a desire to do so. Are we different? Definitely. What do I think of her adopting a child - Great Move! What an brave decision! Imagine the amount of possible resistance from family. She has all my support.
When I start an initiative of my own - training youth in a Govt. School, consultancy job, etc. she goes - what a way of contributing to development, way to go girl!
Instead of this if we were on a trip of one oneupmanship , we would be going all out to prove to the other why what I am doing is more correct than yours. Any guesses on what that would bring us to?