What Life has taught me about Friendship (So far…)

"A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow." ~ William Shakespeare 

The nature of friendships has been on my mind lately. I don’t need to tell you the benefits of having a friend because I’m sure we’ve all felt the positive impacts of a friend, especially a good friend. And if we haven’t, we soon will. Sometimes when I emerge for a quick break out of my writing world, I think about how somewhat anti-social I’ve been or rather that I haven’t been as a good a friend as I should be. I obsess over the details of what makes a great friend and that process leads to absolutely nothing because in the end there really is no perfect formula for the perfect friendship. And who wants to stress over friendships? Love and the actions that back it up are the most important things. But, I still want to share a list of what life has taught me about friendship:

Don’t over think it.

It’s better to let things be without torturing yourself over minute details about whether this was done right or wrong, especially when it concerns the past. Just go with the flow, live in the moment, and if there are big decisions to be made, trust your gut to do the right thing. We’re all old enough to have learned a little from life about right and wrong. You should also never ever be anyone but yourself because if you can’t be real with your friends, then who can see the real you? Sometimes we feel we can’t be our true selves around our own families. That’s when friends lend an arm to save us from drowning. 

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for." 

~ Bob Marley 

A long period of non-communication doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over.

Sometimes you can pick up where you left off. We’re all involved in some project or other, and it can take time away from friendships, but as long as one friend or the other remembers to give that call or send that message, true friends can continue right along as if there was never a lull in the friendship to begin with.

It’s okay to let friendships finish their course. Don’t force it.

There’s a time for everything, and if you sense a friendship is stagnant with no more room for growth, it’s okay to let that person go and move on. Also, if you’re the only one putting effort into a friendship and the other person isn’t, well, that can be a signal to release as well. It’s never a good feeling for both sides when someone is forcing something to exist that is no longer there. People change, and that's okay.

"Silence makes the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts." ~ Margaret Lee Runbeck 

Don’t mistake companionate love for Eros love.

This one is tricky. There’s this consensus peering over our shoulders that you if love someone, you should tell them, which is true, but not all love is the same. Misunderstandings can take over to bring about painful awkwardness and may even transform a friendship into something else that is less satisfying or poignant than the previous nature of the relationship. However, I’m not saying people shouldn’t fall in love with their friends because it’s been shown to happen, and sometimes friends even marry each other. Shoot, I hope the person I marry ends up being my best friend as well. But, this isn’t always the case, so this is where a little thinking before acting wouldn’t hurt.

You will find a friend who becomes family.

Soul mates aren’t limited to couples that have found eternal romantic love, but include friends too: two people who swear they must have been born from the same mother sometime or another. Or as like to I call my own soul mate of a friend: “My sister from another mother.” You’re in sync, cry and laugh together, share the deepest secrets, reveal yourself completely and truly without fear of judgment or rejection, and love unconditionally. No fear, no pressure, total acceptance, and genuine love for each other and each other’s growth. If something good happens to this person, you feel as if it’s happening to you. This friendship is no accident and has no end.

"We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?" asked Piglet

"Even longer," Pooh answered. 

~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

These are solely my experiences with friendship. How about you? What do you think when it comes to friendship? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Have a happy weekend!

Thanks for reading,

Sammy  

Adventures in Korea: Nami Island. Part 1

Hello, Folks!

So sorry I’ve been slow with the updates lately. So much happened in the past week and on and it took time to settle myself into a new life: new place, new jobs, new people, but same ole me. :)

Good memories stifle and taunt you the moment you feel the most vulnerable to nostalgia or feelings of good times gone by. My solution? Write it out. I have a memory of a trip I took with a very lovely friend (whom I shall call Rebecca) in Korea, along with a few students. Our purpose was to escape the quick-paced bustle, inch-to-inch people bumping of Seoul. I proposed the idea of going to an island called Nami that I read about online. What better way to escape the city than to go to an island? I patted myself on the back for that one and felt so proud about my idea.

All Right! 

I invited my fellow teacher Rebecca to take the trip with me, and being the reasonable person that she is, she researched it with her students before giving me the A-OKAY. She invited two students and one brought along her boyfriend. We had ourselves a party, folks! I was excited for the trip and longed for the ship that would give me a break from the crowded streets, pollution, and shoves and pushes from grandmas. I felt like the Elves from the Lord of Rings taking that boat into the west in the ridiculously long ending of the third film in the trilogy. However, I digress.

Morning of our trip arrived and we had to be at the train station at 7:00 AM. Now, usually an early morning appointment, class, meeting or whatever is the biggest drag under the sun for me, but not that morning. The anticipation moved my usually moody morning body out of bed, into the shower, and out to put my outfit and make-up on. I arrived first at the station, which would be a shock to anyone who knows me because tardiness is tattooed in invisible ink on my forehead.

Finally! I would be in nature, amidst trees, fresh air, and grass that stretched far and wide and uncountable unlike the few blades sticking out beneath the concrete. And water. I find it healing and after a hard, tiring week of teaching, I longed to appease my soul with a meditative gaze to the point where the water hits the sky. My hopes and expectations for the day flew at stratospheric heights and I smiled worse than that loopy, purple Cheshire cat because this was my idea. I wanted everyone to have fun and enjoy the day.

Oh, but don’t you love life? One thing it teaches you over and over again: expect the unexpected. My trip to Nami Island turned out to be one of life’s precious gifts on that front. The story continues with the next post!

Ever have high hopes and anticipation for something and it turned out to be less, more, or a mixture of less and more than you expected? I’d like to hear about it.

Thanks for reading,

Sammy 

Ahhh, Nami Island 

Loving My Side Characters (Don’t Neglect Us!)

Every hero needs an awesome sidekick

The COT universe has many side characters so I have to take special care of this bunch. I have main side characters and minor side characters. The main side characters pack a pretty heavy punch to the flow of events in the story and heavily influence the direction my three lovely MCs take. Sometimes it’s easy to neglect side characters when you’re focused on making the MCs the coolest and realest people on this side of the imaginary world. Therefore, it’s only fair that that I surround my MCs with a fascinating and sometimes twisted bunch of supporting characters.

Zackaria, Ryker, and Meliz share three best friends that make the siblings bizarre, confusing life so much easier. First, there’s Ezekial Rushil Battacharjee, aka Zeke, who is half-Indian (father), half-Jewish (mother). He is also Zackaria’s boyfriend. Tall, athletic, kind, possessing gorgeous green eyes speckled with red, it’s no surprise that the 16-year-old junior at Caber Daley Academy (the private school they all attend) has a strong band of followers and admirers. His parents are big shot Hollywood screenwriters who write for award-winning dramas on prime time television. They travel constantly (alone), leaving Zeke behind with the help and his thirteen-year-old bratty brother. He writes frequently, taking from his parents, and video records his friends whenever they hang out because he dreams of becoming a big time movie director a la vein of David Fincher. Zeke’s main problems are that his parents are getting a divorce, and he later discovers that his girlfriend, Zackaria, possesses some sort of freaky super human abilities. Who has a girlfriend who can possibly kill you before you blink? Zeik does.

Next is Zeke’s good childhood friend Faust Beckett. German born Faust is another wildly handsome junior at Caber Daley high school. Half-Black (father) and Half-Latino (mother), Faust has a reputation for being the class clown who takes no prisoners. His father is a punk rocker and his mother a poet. He has two older sisters in college—one is in Germany and the other England. Faust speaks fluent Spanish and German. He moved to the States at the age of nine and met Zeke shortly after in elementary school. Although he has the face piercings and tattoos of a punk, he doesn't want to go into music, but rather loves making graphic novels and comics. Faust is a talented artist and he and Zeke used to combine their creative energy to make comics that they would sell to their classmates. His main problem concerns his new girlfriend, Cielle Jeong, who happens to be the Kato siblings’ biggest pain in the ass. He loves Cielle, but she seems more preoccupied with his friends.

Their third friend is Fallon Nolan, the short but sweet Irish girl with the big, long curly mane of bright copper hair. Her tresses make her easily identifiable at Caber Daley. The junior is the daughter of a former-model-now-photographer (mother) for the nation’s top fashion magazines and a designer (father) who lives in Italy. Faust’s parents are divorced and she’s an only child. Her parents backgrounds have influenced her interests in fashion and photography. She runs a popular fashion blog whose high status has given her access to fashion shows in New York, Italy, and Paris. Her biggest problem right now is making a decision about whether to accept her father’s offer to study fashion in Italy and leave behind her dear friends. She cares a lot about Meliz and worries that her friend is sinking further into herself.

The Kato siblings' friends are two years older than they are but since the siblings have heightened intelligence, they take a mixture of the most advanced junior and senior classes at the school, sharing a few classes with their friends. The trio knows that they’re adopted and their adoptive parents (a Japanese couple who recently had a son—the trio’s newest sibling) revealed that the papers say the Kato siblings are fourteen-years-old. 

Anyway, Zackaria, Ryker and Meliz love their friends to death because these three are the only true friends they’ve ever had. Past attempts at friendship often failed because of rumors and fears circulating around Zackaria and an incident involving the serious injury of three students. That event belongs to the story only, however. Haha. Hope you enjoyed reading about some of my three main side characters.

Question: How do you take care of your side characters? 

Thanks for reading,

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