Live or Let Live?

There is something that you can't do without hesitation, no matter how heartless you claim to be, and that, is betraying a friend. A person close enough for you to have the privilege to call him friend. If it were a split second decision, you choose to live or let live, would you live and not allow him to suffer the misery of existence, knowing your intention, your betrayal, or would you let live to tell him, with no amount of uncertainty, that your heart never intended? That you would die rather than betray? Would he smile through his tears, fondly, at your stupidity, and pay respects to your grave with a regularity envied by those tombs whose flowers have long turned gray as the tombs themselves? Or would he cry out to the sky and pound the earth, whether in disbelief at your intention, or sorrow at your action? Those of which neither of you will ever know, to ever debate on it when your years and ears are both getting on?

On a long list of things that you should never have to do in your meager lifetime, burying your friend , and betraying your friend are both somewhere at the top, along with “Never take sides against the Family.” Which brings us to a Paradox, a Cyclic Dependence. If you can justify neither Burying nor Betraying your friend, then what do you choose when you have to?

Before jumping to the most obvious and most inelegant conclusion that Burying and Betraying are the same thing, stop a moment to think. Are they? Just like insanity is defined in each perspective, varied as the designs in a Kaleidoscope, so does Betrayal. Just to make the proverbial cut and get rid of the offending hand that offers the choice, would it still be a clean break? Is there even a solution to this?

So many questions, so many views, so many thoughts, each leading to the other in an unending spiral and eventually to madness or to the path of ignorance: both pathways of complete bliss. For only the insane understand what is the truth, and the sane suffer from the insanity of trying to simplify a situation and then achieving the complexity that we started to avoid. We build idioms to tell people to see things as they are: call a spade a spade. We made a complex solution to simplify for those who never understood the beauty of plain speech. We congratulate ourselves for something as stupid as that. Are we the sane ones?

Friendship is something we created, to give dependence a non-invasive name. I would not mind being a friend or going to one, but I am too proud to say that I am dependent on my “friend”. Well, after all, there is no dependence between friends right? I could not be closer to dying because of a sudden fit of laughter. Who are we trying to hoodwink? Ourselves I should say.

Digression, you say? I disagree. Who says what is digression and what is not? I raise an elegant eyebrow and smile most unpleasantly.

There are still others who understand that friendship is not for those who value pride too much. They stay within their little bubble of unbreakable glass and pour their heart out, knowing full well that that glass will throw the words right back at them. That's as close as they will get to being friends. They will listen passionately because pride only stops speech, not hearing. And then they will nod and convey, most wordlessly all that needs to be conveyed, and leave the other in a state of peace and light.

Of course if you do not depend, then there arises no friend and therefore betrayal is nothing more than a dispassionate flick of the wrist to sever the ties that bind them to you. Is that not?

But there comes a time for everybody's first. When some of those bubble people allow the slightest crack to form, and then you find a friend, and then you should hope and pray on bended knee that life will never throw at you a sword and say, “Go on, pierce his heart...”