Are friends a vanishing breed?

 Are friends a vanishing breed?

If one moves down the memory lane, an inescapable noticing is an abrupt state of emptiness –marked by a ‘marked absence’ of friends. Did we at all grow with friends, is a lingering feel that refuses to subdue in the sense, we find no plausible answer to this social vacuum in place of an earlier ‘beeline’ of friends chirping around like birds.  Like birds shot at by an air gun, all have disappeared into the oblivion.

Necessarily all of us have had friends at all stages of our life; but once into employment, these friends tend to dwindle in numbers and the frequency of our meeting those friends drops to unit digits. With  advancing stages of life, one comes to have more acquaintances than friends per se. Conversations tend to be more formal and on predictable lines of mutual interest. The earlier instances of boisterous laughter has become an un-illuminated dark corridor in the mind.

Recall, as to when you had your hearty laughter last at the expense of a friend. Certainly it would be near a decade ago.

Have we turned numb to emotions like happiness, laughter and peals of laughter, unmindful of the happenings around. 

Even excellent humour does not elicit a normal response – a hearty laugh. With age, more grin and stoic silence grip our faces, despite our senses staying sharp. The pattern looks ‘imposed’ in the sense that the person restricts self from showing up any response.

Could there be some tangible explanation to this shift in ‘response’?

Over a time, slowly we have drifted from like-minded associates more by circumstantial compulsions like job, place of work, position held and the ‘expected decorum’ from a professional holding in an office. In the company of acquaintances ‘assembled’ by profession, a greater sense of imposed silence prevails. Staying in such ambience through best part of the day, slowly conditions our mind to have ‘reserved countenance’ precluding someone else’s desire to get closer / speak louder. With every other person passing through similar frame of mind, seldom does one have an opportunity to be ‘self’’, revealing a total freedom of interaction.

More or less ‘silence’ is a factor in promoting ‘drift’ among friends, though reasons of hierarchical values [variation by profession  gradient] among friends cannot be outright ruled out. Any attempt to revive old contacts of friendship, generally gets a cold reception for reasons beyond comprehension. If someone can enlighten us, it would be well received.    

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