In this blog post, I take an honest look at my desire to linger in memories with friends and the reasons why I hesitate to become an adult.
When I look at the people around me, I can’t help but feel that life these days is like a high-speed train. Just like a video where the rewind button is broken and it can only play in fast forward, life passes by before it has a chance to take on any real meaning. What’s more, even as it rushes by at this breakneck speed, it isn’t even enjoyable. I should clearly be the protagonist of my own life, yet it seems like only others are the protagonists, and I’m just a third-rate extra in my own drama.
There’s a sitcom I love. It’s the American show *Friends*, which depicts the cheerful daily lives of six friends in New York. My connection to this show runs deep. As a child, I took on the challenge of watching this show—even though I didn’t even like English—just because I vaguely wanted to give studying a try. Now, even as my memories of my childhood friends have faded, this show has been with me for over a decade. Is this what it means to grow attached to a show? While photos and videos remain unchanged over time, *Friends* has aged alongside me. Compared to today’s shows, it’s full of faded visuals and old-fashioned jokes, like an old grandfather.
Yet I love this “outdated” *Friends* so much. Actually, this isn’t anything special. Everyone gets lost in memories and falls into deep thought. And some even argue that perhaps the true meaning of human life lies in the fact that these things fade away so quickly. To me, FRIENDS is a living memory. My childhood friends have all scattered to the winds; I only remember their names, and checking in on them via Facebook is all I do. They are merely afterimages I left behind in the past. Even though I could meet them if I just reached out, the reason I miss them yet lack the courage to do so might be that I’m afraid they—who were once my treasures—have lost their luster just like I have. It’s because I feel a sense of loss, as if all my memories would crumble the moment I face them—those I’ve preserved as beautiful memories.
But FRIENDS is different. The six friends in New York maintain their unwavering friendship and live happily even as the world changes. These six are like parts of a single robot, each with a distinct personality, yet when they come together, they create a single, organic world. Amid the big and small events unfolding inside and outside that world, they laugh and chat together, and sometimes even cry in the face of trials. Like images in an old video, they grow older alongside me, yet in their world, I can still glimpse their pure hearts. Just like my friends and I did when we were children, it seems that pure heart—caring for one another—is what sustains everything.
When I first watched *Friends*, I thought how lucky I was to have friends with whom I could open up like that. But over the ten-plus years I’ve rewatched this show, all the friends I loved have left my side. The childhood friends with whom I shared that innocence were left behind in Neverland while I was consumed by college entrance exams—a place I can neither return to nor even look back upon. The friends I’ve made since then feel like puppets acting according to the situation. Neither I nor they show anything but empty shells to each other; we never truly open up. Only after a drink do we gradually reveal our true feelings, but even that is fleeting. The next day, along with a brutal hangover, comes nothing but endless loneliness and a sense of loss. Neither alcohol nor new acquaintances can fill the void in my heart. Trapped in a constant state of drifting, I’m too busy dealing with the tasks right in front of me to look ahead.
But is this really just my friends’ fault? Perhaps I’m the one who, because of FRIENDS, is trapped in the shackles of the idea of a “true friend” and can’t break free. Those friends who once made my past shine have surely changed by now. They, too, likely grew up in similar circumstances, and in their memories, I am probably someone with a beard, worrying about money and making ends meet. The boldness of my twenties left me before many years had even passed, and all that remains for me now is a heart filled with anxiety.
Sadly, the path that will lead me forward seems to lie not in chasing past ideals while captivated by Peter Pan’s utopia, but in accepting and adapting to the present as it is. I must break free from the shackles of the past, adapt to my current relationships, and learn to enjoy them. I must leave *Friends* and my childhood friends in the realm of memories and continue on my own journey. Breaking free from the past and becoming an adult—that is the path I must take. I cannot be Peter Pan. I must shed the childish mindset of my youth. Yet, the lingering nostalgia I feel when I look back at my old friends and the six friends from *Friends*—isn’t that simply because, deep down, I am human, longing for those memories and wanting to savor them even now?
