Has your idea of what makes a good friend changed as you’ve gotten older?

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The essay reflects on how time transforms life, relationships, priorities, and ideas about friendship. It explores how personality change can affect these transformations over time. Watching festival sky lanterns, an aging man compares their brief, drifting presence with people who enter and leave his life, each leaving lasting impressions. His memories move from carefree schooldays to university, adulthood, competition, disappointment, and greater practicality. He recognises that friendships can evolve, fade, or even become hostile as circumstances and priorities change. The essay argues that moderate self-interest is necessary for survival and helping others, while excessive emotional dependence creates parasitic relationships. Healthy relationships, like symbiosis in nature, require reciprocity, boundaries, flexibility, and awareness that change is inevitable.

Lamp of the sky

It was a quiet afternoon. Sitting alone in a quiet nook of his house, he was deep in thought about the transience of the world and fleeting time. There was a silent but torrential whirl of thoughts within him. A few hours before, precisely fifteen hours, it was a time of celebration. The famous Festival of Light was observed with fun, frolic and religious fervour. Nicely dressed in new clothes, euphoric people were busy bursting crackers with children. The sky was flooded with light and streaks of fireworks. Amidst all this, a ‘lamp of the sky’ was seen going up, slowly gaining height and gliding in the atmosphere with flickering light. It appeared like a celestial happening to him who was watching it unblinking. Overwhelmed, his eyes brimmed. It resonated with his life, which, like the ‘lamp of the sky’, floated all through.

As he watched the lamp gradually vanishing, one more lamp appeared in the sky. Their number slowly increased. In all they were four or five in number, drifting and occasionally oscillating with the air; they were messaging about the ephemeral nature of the world. He remembered how people came into his life and vanished. Some came as a wisp of fragrance, while some as a mild storm, but each left a mark on the canvas of his mind, which became a collage of haphazardly spilled vibrant colours that created a good abstract piece of art.

Personality change: Reminiscence

With the deepening night, the activities came to an end. After post-festivity rituals, people went to rest, and the atmosphere became lulling. The decorated houses, smoke-laden cool air and mist were all that was left. During those moments of silence and twinkling lights, he kept circumambulating on his terrace and thinking about his bygone days. He reminisced about the personality changes since then. During more than seven decades of his life, he saw change in people’s attitudes, thought processes, and the way they led their lives.

Life is dynamic

Change is inevitable. It is intrinsic and signifies life. Life is a dynamic process. It keeps on changing. Static is inertia which is lifeless. Now, when he is sitting in a nook, his mind is trying to decipher the intricacies of the changing world about which he began thinking while watching the drifting ‘lamp of the sky’ last night.

Reflecting past

The carousel of images emerged, gradually becoming fragmented pieces of reels that showed an incident and vanished. It was a large playground at his school. The preceding night’s downpour had inundated it with pluvial water. Here and there, spawns of toads were also seen, which added a degree of romanticism to him. He liked playing in puddles and would squeal when splashing water droplets came to his face. Often the sunlight would cast a pavonine hue on the droplets, amazing him even more.

People’s personality changes

School days were the best part of his life, at least he thought so because of his difficult family. As he progressed in life, things changed significance; their existence shrank to a minimum, so much so that they became irrelevant. This is the way life teaches lessons. Nature keeps changing, and so does the world, which is consubstantial with Nature. A big boulder’s gradual transformational story from pebbles to gravel and from that to coarse and then to fine sand and finally to soil tells a lot about how wear and tear by natural forces affect a thing. Likewise, the living world changes as they grow old; its behaviour changes and with time they become a productive individual like soil, which provides nourishment to growing seeds and plants. It is a cycle that runs ad nauseam with energy that is drawn by a self-sustaining system of mutual inter- and intra-dependence.

Change in body

The carefree school days silently went away, leaving their spoors that often come to his mind. A wisp of petrichor, the first shower, swinging trees, and a foggy afternoon, anything of this sort bring those days to life in his mind. Things changed; the teenager was now on the threshold of age when Peach Fuzz began appearing.

He felt the gradual changes in his body. The physical changes startled him, but he gradually became accustomed to them. The phase he was in now appeared romantic but simultaneously a bit difficult because of the financial constraints. The new phase exposed him to a somewhat practical world. Studies had changed, and so had the teacher-student relationship. His university days were thrilling. The atmosphere was open, unlike that of a school, which used to be strict and binding. Teachers vanished, and new terms like Professor, Reader or Lecturer were in use; they used to take classes in a quite different way. Initially, it looked amazing, but with time, it became routine.

New friends

The school friends suddenly volatilised. The thought process was gradually changing. The topics children used to discuss or deal with had changed. Strange words were becoming common. Discussions were not on mere syllabus and note exchange, it radically changed. The course discussion was a rare thing, but it replaced conversations on politics, films and other such topics. Though he was an introvert, he couldn’t know how or when he started participating in discussions. The meaning of the phrase a friend in need is a friend indeed was changing. He was now in a competitive world.

The changing thought process changes priorities too. In relationship other than nuptial ones, people interact, come closer and sometimes appear inseparable, but with time they drift away. It is yet again a cyclical, thus, the friendship changes with time. Once best friends become deadly foe. Ironically, the deadly one happens to be the closest one like Brutus who backstabbed Julius Caesar.

Changed person

He was now a young man with a changed perspective and priorities. It was time to prepare for a future life which was going to be tough, not even remotely related to the life he had known until now. He had friends and used to spend time with them, but their attitude was not very open. Their veiled behaviour was distinct, but he didn’t understand it. Repeated jolts made him realise it and compelled him to change his outlook about people’s personality. People are generally kindhearted and help others in duress, but they see themselves first. This was rather a demeaning thing for him, but experiences in his later life proved him wrong, and he learnt the hard way. (Psychology Today)

Personality change: Practical approach

Having a practical approach in life is wise. A bit of selfishness is not bad. The underlying idea is that the necessity of saving oneself is at the core of helping others. The recent catastrophic flood (August 2026) in Nepal made this evident. Securing helping hands is vital for ensuring definite help for the needy. Opting for a healthy dose of practicality and strategic selfishness is necessary, and there is no need to feel guilty about it. A mother in the role of a single parent has to take good care of herself first, for a reason that only a healthy mother can take care of her little children. This is commonly found throughout the animal kingdom, especially in more advanced groups.

Emotions play an important role. In the case of human beings, they are more structured and varied. The family, which is the core unit of society, plays a vital role in inculcating values in a child. It is necessary that a child receives the right treatment and learning because it is the bedrock of their future life. Children should learn to set boundaries for themselves. An excessive and impractical approach leads to a doctrinaire attitude, which in the later part of life gives rise to complications. It should be known to all that things change, and so do the behaviour and thoughts of human beings. This is not new. Nonetheless, it must also be kept in mind that lopsided, self‑centred thinking amounts to sheer selfishness or obsequious behaviour.

Symbiotic not parasitic

Relations are intrinsic but rarely spontaneous. It is a harsh reality especially for those who excessively romanticise things. A parasitic relationship sucks the vitality of its host. Overdose of emotion allows the parasite to exploit which can’t be a healthy relationship. Contrary to parasitic relationship a symbiotic is not only practical but viable also. A bee collects nectar from a flower and in return it pollinates and helps them in their process of reproduction. This is a type of symbiosis where both are beneficial to each other. In human relationship it is the most effective way to keep a relationship healthy and working.

While making relationship, it is also necessary to think about the aspect of change in personality of individual as well. The endeavour should be to have some measure of doubt in any relationship rather than believing dogmatically.

Further reads:

• The Importance of Lifelong Learning for Personal Growth
• The Journey of Life Sciences: A Personal Reflection
• Understanding Nervousness: Causes and Effects
• The Impact of Influential Teachers on Learning
• Envisioning a Better Society: Insights and Changes

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