Of Friends > IDEAS & IDEALS

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To make and have a few friends in one's life is natural for anyone. Next to parents, brothers and sisters, and relatives, they come along to our life without effort, and constitute a very special and sometimes important part of our social as well as emotional life. From early childhood through youth and adulthood to old age, we meet people everywhere, spend some time together, and feel closer to some ones in particular, and form a special kind of emotional tie or bond with them which is called friendship. Free from the hierarchy and obligation of the blood relations within the family, it grows and blooms freely and naturally among our equals, like wild flowers in the fields.

      It is emotionally as well as practically good for you to have some friends around you at any stage of your life. Besides having good time and fun together with, friends have many social functions to perform. They come to your house-warming party when you move to a new apartment, to your baby's first birthday party, and to your sixty-first birthday party with some presents or money. They congratulate you on your promotion by making phone calls, sending telegrams or flower pots. They visit you when you are sick in bed or hospitalized. They come to your grown-up children's weddings and to your parents' funerals. Sometimes they help you get a job by recommending you to a certain person. Sometimes, but very rarely, they loan you money when you are in a financial trouble, and some truly good but innocent ones stand surety for you at the risk of losing their house. They comfort and console you when you are in sorrow or in distress. To have many friends is, therefore, a good index of your worldly success, good fortune, rounded character as well as fine personality.

      Friends can be made anytime and anywhere, but most of all, every level of schools we go through our life - elementary schools, nay, the kindergarten before that, and junior and senior highschool, and college - are the major breeding places of friends and friendship. Even after graduation and the subsequent separation from one another, their names, faces, physical characteristics and personalities remain on our mind and memory, and in the yearbook.

      To promote and propagate this lofty ideal of friendship and to meet with the practical needs and purposes of the world, alumni associations are formed, and we pay  annual membership fees and make some special donations from time to time. They publish bulletins or memorandum books regularly in which the recent news of the graduates, of their telephone numbers and home addresses are all recorded. We try not to fail to attend the annual reunions of the alumni to be held once or twice a year. In the meetings, we shake hands warmly with each other, exchange our name-cards, and eat, drink and sing together. We try to keep in touch with each other and take pain to keep the flame of friendship once lit alive and long-lasting.

      Arriving at home late from the alumni meetings with my pockets bulging with the newly collected name-cards, I empty all of them onto my desk and usually find myself deeply occupied in sorting and re-arranging and classifying them with great care and concentration for the use in the future. I should remember who is who, who is what, and where they are. There is one who is a cop. This friend is inevitable when I would be caught in driving drunk. I should remember in what police station he is working now. There is another very important person who is a dentist. Two of my teeth are rotting and crumbling, and I am afraid to go to the unknown dentist in my neighborhood. He will charge horrible amount of money for the work unknown to me. My dentist friend will surely charge, but I think and hope, reasonably. Or if he is real good friend, no money at all, all out of friendship.  

      And here is one who is an executive in KAL. I must pay attention to him, for airline ticket is very hard to buy sometimes, even with money. He is the very one to contact when I go to New York this summer. The friend who is in the bank should not be neglected, for I will need some loan of money in low interest when one of my daughters gets married this fall. Now I realize belatedly that the card of the overbearing friend who is a professor in a university is also very useful, for I need badly a suitable person who will officiate at the wedding ceremony of my daughter at hand.

      The name-card of the medical doctor in a large general hospital should be kept with special care, because his advice and help is invaluable when one of my families should be hospitalized, including me. Also that of an attorney at law, of a prosecutor, and a judge, and a congressman for the emergency use in the future. They are all useful, powerful and influential friends I have. Friends ought to help one another. Friends in need are friends indeed. Friendship is forever. Friendship is all.

      But to our great regret and sadness, it is not. Friends come and go, like seasons, and friendship, like the moon in the sky, waxes and wanes. Like wine, it can go sour and bitter. Like flowers, it blooms and fades, falls and finally can cease to be. Friends once made rarely lasts long unchanged in its intensity, closeness and intimacy. It changes and varies according to the vicissitudes of life in which they find themselves or into which they are thrown. Long separation by time and place makes friendship not necessarily impossible but almost unviable. Friends are friends when they meet often and frequently. One of the most awkward occasions and experience in life is to meet a long-separated friend. Out of face is indeed out of mind.

      Not always, but often than not, friends turn out to be a nuisance, a humiliation, a hindrance, a rival, a con man, a betrayer, or even an enemy. Julius Caesar was killed by Brutus, his best friend. President Park Chung-hee was assassinated by Kim Jai-kyu, his trusted friend. Former president Kim Young-sam and the incumbent president Kim Dae-jung who are known to the world as sworn political enemies were once friends. Those who are connected with and involved in the recent "Gate Scandals" are all highschool friends. Years ago, one of my friends not only embezzled his (and my) friend's money, but also stole his wife. Yesterday a highschool friend of mine tuned up to me out of blue, forced me to buy a water-purifier at a horrendous price, although I told him over and over again that I had already one. I hate him. Friends once are not always friends.
                                                                                                       (April 11, 2002)