Graduation was the best phase of my life. This was where I met my soul mates, i.e. my friends. During those days, I would consider all my batch-mates to be my friend. Now when I look back, I realise, apart from a few, the rest were just my batch-mates, not friends.

When we start working at some company, the people we work with are known as colleagues. Why is it so? It is because we are professionally linked to them but not personally or emotionally. Our relation exists only while we are at office, or wherever office work is evolved. They don’t mean any more than that. Once we change our company, we get a new set of colleagues and most of the old ones are forgotten.

But, there are these few special ones who always stay in our lives. Be it from school, college or workplace, they always stay connected. It doesn’t matter if we are together or miles apart, it’s the heart that is connected, such that whenever we meet them, every day or once in a while, we always are able to start from where we last left. The time gap in between doesn’t matter. Such people are known as ‘Friends’.

We hear people term friends as ’the real friend’ and ‘the false friend’. I personally don’t believe in any such thing as a ‘false friend’. If we call someone our friend, it’s only the real ones, else why do we have terms like classmates, batch-mates or colleagues. The false friends, as people refer them, are just people whose path crosses our path of life for a brief interval of time. They are there just to play their part in our life, but we shouldn’t allow them to affect our life in any way. We should just learn the lesson life wants to teach us and move on.

On the other hand, ‘Friends’ are:

• People who help bring out the best in us.

• We may experience a sense of deja vu when we are with them.

• They seem to understand the true us, and we can just be our own selves in their presence. They don’t try to change us

• They don’t judge us ever.

• They will always support us, but not when we are wrong

• They are our go-to person for the most precious set of advises

• It doesn’t matter if we don’t talk to them every day, we know in our hearts that they will be there when we truly need them

• They are the same in front of you as they are behind you

• In short, they are our siblings from another mother

Finding such friends isn’t easy. But if we have them, we have the real treasure of the world. We always have the satisfaction that there is someone who knows the real us and loves us for the person we are, that we will never be alone.

You must have heard the saying:

I completely vouch for it. Men and Women are very different in the way they think. When a woman shares her feelings with a man, he may not understand the gravity of it. Boys are said to be more casual in their approach towards life. They forget the little things that happen in day-to-day life and are more focused on the main picture or the bigger issues of life. Whereas, girls stick to every incident and overthink about it. It’s their characteristic that cannot be changed. So for a woman, her girlfriends are the most important ones who play the part of keeping them sane. They help her understand and reason out what may have been the motive behind it. It’s something that makes her relate to and suddenly it all makes sense and thus relaxes her brain.

Many of us are in the mind-set that the longer we are friends with someone, the better friends we are. I don’t believe this to be true. We can say when two people stay connected for longer, the bond become stronger, but this doesn’t mean that the person we have just met cannot be the real friend we were in search of. It just simply clicks. The bond feels strong from the very beginning and our thinking will match.

Two people may be completely different from each other, in many aspects of life. What truly connects friends is the comfort level each one feels in the presence of the other, respect and love. The importance we hold in the other person’s life is what makes the bond stronger. We may not realise immediately who are our friends, but time will make it clear.

Once you find such a friend, hold on to the soul for life and see how beautiful life is.