Friends

Again, I had woken up on time only to instinctively switch off my alarm again. It was the same excuse that I lived so close to work that I could afford another half-hour of sleep. Guess what? I could, but with a generous serving of urgency.

And so, I was racing to work that day. It was all the same routine:

Tap my card
Walk through the turnstile
Enter the building
Momentarily hold the door open for anyone behind
Amble down various flights of stairs, blocked by less-agile personnel
Rush across a carpark to the office

Except this time, something caught my eye at the foot of the staircases. It was like a black guitar pick with a splash of colour down the middle transitioning from turquoise to green. I paused momentarily to muse at it before rushing on again.

After work, I followed the same routine, except backwards. Again, I saw the black pick, and bent to pick it up. Only then did I realise that it was not a pick, but the wing of a butterfly. I searched around a bit and found a matching piece shoved in some corner, tattered away. The butterfly itself was nowhere to be found. Still, the wing I found was complete, and it was still there after so many hours. Till today, it is on display in my wallet: a memory of the butterfly that ceased to be.

Friends are like that. If I could use imagery to describe this, imagine a curious canary that alights upon your windowsill; a fallen flower that drifts to the earth in a final dance; a broken wing of a brilliant butterfly -- images which invariably tend to bring a smile to the common person.

In this same way, friends are the little sparkles in your life.

And in the same way, you can never drag all of them through life. We cannot tie the canary to the window or throw up the flower to let it fall again. In the same way, some friends drop in merely to leave a sweet memory. Some drop in and stay there as a companion. It is not our obligation to stay in contact with all of them. It is, however, our duty to grant those who are worthy an eternal memory.

For remembering someone is pure. In a commercial world, people want to be remembered. People want fame and fortune. To be remembered and acknowledged is their idea of success. To remember someone, however, takes an additional step of humility and respect. And so, to grant someone a memory that withstands the test of time is truly remarkable indeed. To commit something as precious as a memory is all that a friend could really ask for. Any attempts at maintaining contact is bonus.