Midnight ramblings:
There was a time when friendship seemed immune to the world’s troubles.
We rode bicycles until dusk, laughed at things now long forgotten, and gathered around tables where politics rarely mattered more than the people seated there. We knew one another by character, by kindness, by shared years—not by party or ideology.
Now we find ourselves in our sixties, carrying decades of memories alongside divisions that somehow grew sharper than any of us imagined. Conversations once easy have become cautious. Some friends drifted quietly away; others vanished behind walls of anger, certainty, or disappointment. It is a peculiar sorrow to realize that people who once stood shoulder to shoulder at weddings, funerals, ballgames, and backyard cookouts can suddenly seem like strangers.
What troubles the heart most is not disagreement itself. We have always disagreed about something. It is the feeling that disagreement now demands separation—as if differing views erase shared history, loyalty, laughter, and love. As if the years meant less than the arguments.
I do not understand why it has to be this way either. Growing older was supposed to teach us the value of time and the rarity of genuine friendship. Instead, many of us have watched the world insist that allegiance to causes matters more than allegiance to one another.
And yet, somewhere beneath the noise, I’m hoping that the people we once knew are there. Perhaps weary. Perhaps afraid. Perhaps simply caught in a time that rewards division more than grace. But I cannot help mourning the loss of those carefree days when friendship itself seemed enough.
English
