My Best Friend

We’ve been writing essays since we were young. That was when we used to write for the sake of it. We wrote because we were told to write. The teacher usually announced to the class to start writing an essay, and everyone would just start writing, without thinking what should actually be written. Whatever we wrote never came from within us. We never knew the meaning of a single word that we wrote ourselves back then. Essays like “A visit to a hill station”, “A rainy day” and the favorite of many of us, “My Best Friend” were the most commonly written essays.

We never knew what the word “friend” meant. A friend for us was someone whom we used to see every day, without realizing how life would be if we didn’t see a friend for even one day. A friend was someone we used to sit in class with, without realizing what it means to be with someone you feel comfortable with. A friend used to be someone we shared our lunch with, without realizing that sharing things with friends can give the best feeling ever. A friend was someone we waved back to while leaving school, where waving back only meant for a maximum of a day. A friend was someone who invited us on to his birthday party; in fact the number of our friends was somewhat directly proportional to the class fellows who invited us on to their birthday parties, but we never realized what emotions can there be behind one single invitation. Back then, we never knew if a friend could be someone we’d want to be with when we’d be all alone in a crowd of a thousand people. We never knew if a friend could be someone we’d share all our problems with, and would love to listen to and try solving all the problems that friend has. We never knew if we could trust a friend with whatever goes on in our lives, if we could care for that person and get care in return. This six character word just didn’t have any meaning back then, but words change meanings don’t they…

Actually, words don’t change meanings. We start giving meanings to words. We define them the way we want to. There was a time when I searched for words that could complete my definition of the word “Friend”, but as if there wasn’t any word that could properly define this word the way I wanted to. That’s when I realized, that a friend is just a friend, and that there are words that do not need help of other words for their definition. I found out that this word doesn’t need any supporting words, that you know it inside you who is your friend and who is not, and that your words lose meaning if you forcefully try giving meaning to your words.

For me, my best friend is only my best friend. I don’t need to satisfy myself and remind myself saying that I trust my best friend, or that I care for my best friend, or that I share everything with my best friend… I just know it inside me that I have a best friend, and this feeling is enough for me to stop analyzing people on the criteria of how others define best friends. I now have my own definition of my best friend, and that definition has no words…