Friends are like opium

Many of the most beautiful memories I have now were carved when I was in college. Those were the days when, sans mobile phones and iPods, real friendship blossomed like wildflowers in the fields of UP Los Baños. The friends I made then are still the friends I keep now. Most of them I still get to reconnect with from time to time. Others just remain in my thoughts; my memories of them are as fresh as the scent of the rain-drenched grass on the campus grounds. I don’t see them anymore but the sweet aroma of their friendship lingers.

In college, I made it a hobby to collect friends. I also made it a habit to keep them. When you are far away from your family — in those days I only saw my loved ones, just like many of my classmates in college, during the weekends — you begin to look for a semblance of it in the company of your friends. They keep you warm in the Decembers of your life. They shout “kampai” with you when you celebrate life — its many challenges, its many joys.

You become an extension of your friends; and vice versa. When you’re young and free-spirited, you have more time not to take life so seriously. You’re cautious and critical, yes; but not enough to kill the glee that goes with being young.

Then, after graduation, you promise to keep abreast of each other. Somewhere along the way, you lose track of one another. But that does not follow that you also lose them in your life. You just don’t hear their footsteps anymore but it only takes one gush of memory to remember them by. All so suddenly, you see their footprints again in your life.

And when you remember them again, you are compellingly brought back to the glory of yesteryears. Then you feel very young again. There’s so much renewed energy in your gait; you’re time-warped and it leaves you with a very good feeling. You float in mid-air.

* * *

A family I called my own when I was in LB was the UPLB Com Arts Soc, the 33-year-old official organization of students taking up Communication Arts. It was in this family where I met in the late ’80s the most precious friends I keep to this day.

Recently, the Com Arts Soc had an alumni homecoming. It was one of the rarest moments in my life where I prayed the moment would never end if only for the gaiety and bliss that overflowed that day.

That get-together was a balm to our soul. The reunion made us forget about formalities — never mind if many of those at the event are soc members we were meeting for the first time. In our minds, we were bonded by the soc and it had been the spirit of the soc to forget about boundaries, even age differences.

What started at 1 p.m. one Saturday ended at almost 1 p.m. of Sunday for some who attended the homecoming. And we were still complaining why we had to part ways. How we wished there were more than 24 hours in a day!

Some came alone but escorted by their glowing, happy veneer. Who wouldn’t be excited to see old friends?

Some came in groups but immediately disintegrated to hug and huddle with others they had not seen or heard of for the longest time.

Some came with their families and ended up explaining to their young children why they were behaving oddly that day. 

When old friends meet, they talk about old things that paradoxically make them feel young. 

We are who we are now not only because of ourselves but also because of our friends who were with us in those days when dreams were all we had.

Real friendship is like opium, it can make you high.

(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com or my.new.beginnings@gmail.com. Have a blessed Sunday!)