FriendsOn my recent travels, I came to realize still more fully the significance of the word “friend”.Seven or eight days ago, I said to a friend whom I had just come to know, “I can’t help feeling embarrassed before my friends. You’re all so nice to me. I simply don’t know how to repay your kindness,” I did not make this remark out of mere modesty and courtesy. I truly meant what I said. The next day, I said goodbye to this friend, not knowing if I could ever see him again. But the little warmth that he gave me has been keeping my heart throbbing with gratitude.The length of my days will not be unlimited. However, whenever I look back on brief past life, I find a beacon illuminating my soul and thereby lending a little brightness to my being. That beacon is friendship. I should be grateful to it because it has helped me keep alive up to now and clear away the shadow left on me by me old family.Many people forsake their friends in favor of their own families, or at least draw l line of demarcation between families and friends, considering the former to be many times more important than the latter. That seems to be a matter of course. I have also seen with my own eyes how some people abandon their friends as will as their own careers soon after they get married…Friends are trans ient whereas families are lasting—that is the tenet, as I know, guiding the behavior of many people. To me, that is utterly inconceivable. Without friends, I would have been reduced to I don’t know what a miserable creature.Friends are my saviors. They give me things which it is beyond my family to give me. Thanks to their fraternal love, assistance and encouragement, I have time...
