The Wisdom of Aramis

True Friendship I often ask myself – how do various definitions of a friend from various dictionaries correlate to the real meaning of a friend in a contemporary world... We can find definitions like: someone we like and enjoy being with, someone we care about and who cares about us in return, person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard and many, many others. When we read through them, we will think for a while, analyze our friends and ask ourselves – Which one of my friends is my real friend? Which one of my friends really cares about me? Which one of them is a true friend? And the answers will shock us, because we will come to a conclusion that there are not as many true friends in our lives as we thought there were, just telephone numbers, codes and icons pretending to be smiling at us politely. These icons are just representing our temporary interests, our temporary bridges that are connecting us while working for the same company, while being involved in a certain project together, while working out in the gym together, while living in the same building or being on the same trip. What most people do when their mutual interest ceases to exist is – they tend to burn bridges behind them. And they don’t worry too much about the consequences, because the safety net of their numerous digital friends is always there to catch them when they fall. In the digital era people have begun to treat the concept of a friend not as someone but something and that is pretty disturbing. A friend is not considered a person, a living being with thoughts and feelings any more, but a thing that can be found and lost. In a digital era, a friend is being treated like something that is easy to find and much easier to loose, like something we can count in thousands, something we can buy or sell with a wit, a funny photo, or a click, something we can steal from someone else, or something we can easily forget. A friend has become a thing, an icon, an avatar of a game called social life which is always a click away. Thanks to social media we like to think and believe that all these little icons / avatars on our Facebook profiles are our true friends. What a superficial point of view. Should we really be involved in anything that is offered to us, just because it’s something new or just because everyone is getting in that game? What will happen if we choose not to accept the invitation to be like the rest of the crowd? Social media has totally twisted the meaning of the word friend. People make friends more easily, just as they break up their relationships more easily than before thanks to the so called social media. And true friendship is something that shouldn’t be easily breakable. True friends are always there for you and always know when you need them. They are not little smiling icons, but real people with real hearts and minds whom you trust completely. True friend is someone you can confide in. We can’t search for a real friend with a Facebook or Google search engine, but only with our hearts. Our hearts and minds are the only search engines we can really trust. We should keep in mind that social media can also be anti-social. Just think of all the bad things people are experiencing on the net, just think about all the negative sides of digital behavior of internet users. We are holding on to our smartphones as if they were our favorite pets, or our survival kit for the modern world. If we lose them by any chance, we become totally lost and confused. It seems like we are even not thinking any more about anything like we used to, because Google is doing all the thinking for us. Search engines have become our thinking aids. We behave like we have Google search engines inside our heads instead of our brains. Emoticons have replaced our real emotions, clicks and touch screens have replaced physical intimacy between people, user names, passwords and nicknames have replaced our real names and surnames, acronyms have replaced our real words and sentences. It seems like someone is trying to turn us into humanoid robots trained to act on impulse. We think that the world is getting closer and smaller every day and yet it seems like more and more invisible walls between people are emerging every day. Are we aware of them? Just look around you and you will see that there is no eye contact between people any more, everyone is in “eye contact” only with their smartphone, not noticing anybody or anything around them. Where is the forgotten world of true friends? Where is the forgotten world where people are still noticing each other on the street, in the park, in the bus or anywhere else in the public transport? Where is the world in which we are smiling at each other and enjoying this world together? Where is a real friend? Whenever I compared the ways of this world to Ari’s gaze, I knew immediately which way to choose and where to go. I needed no dictionary to define the word friend, because there he was, always there for me, always by my side, always waiting for me, always accepting my invitation to play or go for a walk, always ready to be hugged and kissed by me, always caring for me and loving me with all his heart, just as I was always caring for him with all my heart. He gave me a chance to live in a better world, in a world of true friendship, love and togetherness. He also helped me to detect all the pitfalls of the modern world. Ari helped me keep an open heart and stay human in this inhuman world.