Friendship

Today Pedro and me went to a little square and in less than ten minutes Pedro was chatting and playing with two children who were there. When I decided it was time to leave he told me, "I want to stay with my friends." Friendship at the age of eight is simple, it's taken naturally and they take it for granted that if they can play at the same things, they are friends.

A while earlier we were watching some teenagers skating in the rambla. The scene was more or less similar. Because they shared the passion of achieving jumps and that, there was an air of friendship floating in the air that admired me.

The adult friendship, however, is not so simple, is it?

The people we talk more openly with and who have more time to share are the people sitting in front of a computer who are willing to chat. People we never saw, almost always. To these people we ask about their whole life and we answer frankly. They often stays up all night in order to chat with us and they end being an unmeasurable support. But can we say they are friends?

To our lifelong friends we see them in a hurry, because we both have lots of things to do. If we want to do something together it's incredibly difficult to agree on a date and time to do it.

We women, with other women friends, fight against that obvious competence, or sometimes hidden, which it is quite difficult to get rid of. Although, thank God, there are exceptions! Like my friend Caro, with whom if anything good happens to any of the two, the other gets just as happy as if it was a personal achievement, and viceversa.

With our men friends, we keep measuring words and actions for the fear of roles getting confused. Roles which, if there is a good friendship, almost always get confused and far from embellishing the relationship, they complicate it and often destroy it.

A he or she friend for me is something sacred. It always was. However, I have done undefendable disasters in the past and I've lost excellent friends. What was the worst disaster? I believe that lack of good communication. And my own relativism which often prevents me from having clear what I want, therefore transmit it.

Today I have more virtual friends than real ones. And those are the friends who lift my mood every day and who inspire and teach me all sorts of things.

But well, luckily I also have friends who materialize close-by and with whom we can exchange hugs, laughter, visits to the theatre, mates, teas, walks by the rambla, visits to the beach, unending chats in bars, meditations and repairing silences.

I feel I have to open more to the others at the time I allow relationships to flow adrift, like they always flow. And that means also not to stress myself because a friendship finished. Everything seems to be a matter of balance. Balance between offering and receiving, between helping and asking for help, between talking and listening, between asking and answering, between offering one's heart (that's a nice song by Fito Páez) and being responsible for the heart of the other.

It's the hell of an adventure.