Of silver and gold

When I was a child, I had a song book called Sing around the campfire. Riddled with songs like Michael row your boat and Kumbaya, I have no idea how it ended up in my distinctly secular home yet somehow it did. It came with a casette which I played over and over until the tape wore thin. To this day I can still sing along to the mournful sounds of Nobody knows. There is one song in particular of which the refrain dug itself into my memory:

make new friends
but keep the old
one is silver
and the other gold

As I child you think friendships are forever. Nothing or nobody can drive you and your friend apart. You share the good, the bad, the secrets and giggles. You solemnly promise each other in your poesiealbums that you will be best friends forever. But then one day you go to different schools, different universities, different lives. You try to keep in touch but eventually they become people you once used to know.

As you get older the duration of friendships tends to decrease. Very few people nowadays work in the same place for more than a couple of years and we change countries almost as easily as we do underwear. My friends live in half a dozen different countries or so. It is difficult to keep friendships alive when you live far apart. Even when neither of you has really changed since the days of your friendship, everything else has. You don't know the same people anymore and don't share the same present so instead you fall back on your shared past. Friends for old times' sake. It is heartbreaking to realise sometimes that time has eroded the foundations of your friendship. Keeping the golden glow on old friendships takes a lot of dedicated polishing.

New friendships can also be fragile. Over the last year I have met many new people some of whom I would now consider friends. But already I have lost some as well. For a year we have worked together day in-day out but when the final term ended we all went our separate ways again. Sure, we can send each other emails and virtual Facebook presents but experience has taught me that we are more likely to remain friendly acquaintances than friends. Only the alchemy of friendship can turn silver into gold. Whenever it does we should cherish it for the rare treasure it is.