old cronies

in college, i thought that my closest buddies at that time would end up as my lifelong friends, business partners even. plans for the future usually included living in the same neighborhood, setting up a common business, being godfather and godmother to each other's children, going on trips outside the country and countless others that i was almost confident that nothing would change after 20 years. well, many of them are still around. i ended up godfather to some of their children. most of us are indeed in the same profession. but we don't live in the same neighborhood, those who attempted to go into business together ultimately burned their bridges. and some of them just faded away.

then i moved on, went to medical school and met new friends. this time, the signs of permanence are there. i joined a fraternity where commitment is, as the cliche goes, lifelong. common interests, common backgrounds and common workplaces almost ensured that separation anxiety would not be much of a problem come graduation time. despite my devotion to my frat, i had life outside of the titans. i believed in the yin-yang, the balancing of life and the forces that surround it in order to ensure that one is not blinded by one's affiliations or loyalties. so i cultivated friendships outside of the frat. i thought it was healthy. i thought that it was in my best interest that i have as many friends as possible from the most varied groupings. even from our rival frat.

so ian and the gang became the diving buddies, golfing competitors and partners in just about every crime commonly committed by young adults in their early twenties. we did not intend to plan our lives as friends. day by day, week by week, we tackled each other's struggles individually. we looked out for each other but never lost track of the notion that we were all on our own. we mapped out our plans according to our own desires and resources, not on what the common goal was. or because we simply had no common goal. our ambitions were not modest by any measure, but quite realistic given our individual capabilities and built-in (meaning family) advantages.

in other words, we took life as it came. no big deal about how long we will be together as friends. what mattered most was where things will work out best for each of us. after graduation, we took different specialties in different hospitals. we had a lull on the golf matches for a while, but ultimately the diving expeditions resumed sooner than we expected. some had children way ahead of most of us, some had domestic challenges of their own, some had occasional balance sheet issues, but we made sure we saw each other once in a while. no longer a nightly affair like during our years in med school and internship, but those brief moments are always enough.

there's really no telling who or which set of friends will stand the test of time. faces come and go and there is still no fool-proof instrument that tells us which ones are good and which ones will go quietly into the night.

we just take them as they come.