Friendship Is Earned, Truly

So, I used to write an entry on friendship before, and I defined friendship as more than a person you meet casually. Friendship is emotional and it should have emotional component. I have thought about it lately and I can't help but wonder if friendships are predestined life courses. Of course as a Muslim, I believe that everything that happens in this life is a fate, and there must also be our own hands to contribute to the direction of the fate. But are friendships more "fate" than "efforts"?

I have a dear friend at USM who had been in a best-friendship with a certain person in our class. They had been together being best friends for more than five years and that should count for something right? But a particular issue that happened several weeks ago made them far apart, and now just two acquaintances who say hi to each other on the street. How could this happen? My friend asked. "We've been together in so many ups and downs. We knew about each others' good and bad. But only now, when we love each other, care about each other, then we have to have our friendship demoted to a lower status?"

As a close friend to this person, I am certain that she is not a person who likes to make enemies, nor does she like to even have a minor conflict. She is very kind and compassionate. But when she is given a chance of an opportunity that her ex-best friend was dying to get a shot for, everything changed.

You see, my point is, my friend was a hard worker when it comes to friendship. She loves her friends and she cares about her friends (note: friends, not acquaintances), and she considers them, especially her best friends as her own family. But still, fate intervenes and has to cut them apart. This happened a lot in my life too. I had a bunch of best friends in my previous universities but now, we barely contacted each other through Facebook (although in my case, it was mostly my fault and their fault equally). What does this mean?

Perhaps it means, we're not in total control of the friendships in our life. They are, no matter how much effort we put in, still a subject of fate. We can't predict the future of even the strongest friendship there is, even more the ones that just bloom. So, what should we do in the event of this? So, appreciate the friends you have now.  We very frequently take some of them for granted and only when we lose them, then we realize how much they mean to us. But it's too late. Still, make effort to make your friends feel like they're a part of your lives, hoping that when you do that, fate (I hope by now, you understand by "fate," I mean God) knows that your effort should be worth your friendship.