Can we just be friends?

It is an old age question that every couple battles with: Is it possible for two people, male and female just be friends with no strings attached? Can two people just be friends without being romantically involved? 

These questions have constantly been the subject of debate in different societies today. The answer to this no one knows, but there are definitely some pointers that people should be wary of in such types of friendships.

It is true that opposite sex friendships stand on shaky ground half the time but the evidence that men and women can never be just friends is too overwhelming. 

In the movie "When Harry met Sally", actor Billy Crystal said that men and women can not be friends because the sexual attraction part always gets in the way.

It is not just about the movies but also various studies that have been carried out show that opposite sex friendships account for 15 percent of affairs in married couples.

If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, it may help to explain why men and women can never be friends.

A friend of mine told me that all the blame should be put on any red-blooded, heterosexual man and woman. Point to the jealous that plagues any rational person when a significant other befriends someone of the opposite sex.

But can we take this juvenile line of thinking associated with teenagers and say truly a man and a woman can never be just friends?

Wrong, the belief that men and women can never be friends comes from another era in which women were at home and men were in the workplaces and the only way they could get together was for romance.

However society has changed and the paradigm shift has now seen the the two sexes working together, sharing interests and socializing together.

This cultural shift has helped people to see that though it may be tricky, men and women can successfully be close friends. What is more interesting  is that there are more good reasons for the two parties to do so.

In our African culture, our societies have long pointed out that the only relations that are approved between opposite sexes are romantic ones because they are productive and people have babies which continues the life cycle. True, but absurd!

Part of this confusion over the relationships stems from the way the media portrays these relationships. In "When Harry met Sally" what the movie successfully did was to convince a whole group of moviegoers that sex always comes between friends.

But that is not the only movie, almost every time you see a male-female friendship, it winds up in a whirl-wind romance. take our local drama Studio 263, Vimbai Jari was befriended by Tom Mbambo and where did it end? Talk about The Bold and The Beautiful's Taylor and Chip, on Generations Sharon and Samuel. the list is endless.

These cultural images are hard to overcome and this is why society looks at any relation between opposite sexes to lead to romance.

A popular saying that says everything under the sun is marked and approved by society caught my attention as  I was going through an interesting novel just the other day and I realized, if these beliefs had been cultivated by the media into society then the situation could be reversed. 

So if one is truly to assess all the evidence and ask again if men and women can be friends, the answer would be absolutely!

Men and women can be friends, it depends on the different stages the individuals are in their lives or the practicalities involved such as marriage and living too far apart.

Often when men and women are friends, they have already diffused the sexual energies that they used to generate and they often find themselves at ease with each other.

Sometimes some people would have worked closely together, or met through families, or have simply known each other since their childhood. Whatever the circumstances, the familiarity makes them feel like brother and sister. They can be themselves with each other.

Should you however find yourself in an exclusive relationship, and you do not want to introduce your new friend to your mate, you have to ask yourself, "Is this just friendship?" or is he or she a friend with possibilities?

Attraction and compatibility are the building blocks for close relationships, ,so the bridge from friendship to romance is already built. The big question is when, if ever, it will be crossed.

The bottom line is that men and women can be friends, but the bridge to romance and the possibility of crossing it always exists. 

The return to innocence....

The Return to Innocence....A self discovery journey!

When the young know not of the sins of the "flesh"

Gone are the days when the innocence of youth was preserved and valued as the essence of an individual. 

It knew not the boundaries of age, sex, race or religion. It was not confined by anything or anyone, but was championed by everyone and innocence was the center on which the earth revolved.

This is not just a compilation of random words, but of carefully constructed thought, that seeks to reflect on the yesteryear of lost youth and innocence.

I have often wondered were the human race lost it and I have failed to come up with a logical explanation. I am not always the one to lay blame on the next party and will not start doing so now. 

Once upon a time..., right at the beginning of all creation, man was created innocent and blameless before God, but Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and there began the doom of all humankind.

Could they have succumbed to the charms of the snake because of their innocence? or was it out of their own curiosity that they were driven by their passion to be bad? Those are the one questions that still boggle my mind even right to this moment.

One thing I definitely know is that, it does not take an aptitude test for one to position themselves to loose their innocence. 

For those who do not drink, it takes just a feel steps to get into the bar, sit on a stool and order one shot of vodka. For the non-smokers, all it takes is just one joint rolled real nice in rizzler and just one drag. For the young virgin boys and girls, all it takes is a touch of uncontrolled hormones and lack of self control or for others the need to just experiment with their new found burning desires.

Of all the above mentioned, they all have one thing in common, it does not take seconds before you are changed from one form to another. All it takes is just a millisecond and all innocence is lost.

For many the change from innocence to being a drunk, a smoker, or a sex athlete becomes the order of the day and soon these cultures infiltrate the rest of the youths who are still oblivious to the new order.

But what really happens when an individual tries to return to innocence?

For many it could be a self discovery journey filled with heartache and tears, but what most people fail to realize is that, it is the beginning of a new lease on life and not the end.

It is simply the universe speaking to us, gently nudging us that our ways are starting to take the wrong track, and how we must turn back into our inner child and find the light within us all. That in turn will be the cure of many of the problems of the world, and how in order to change the world we must first change ourselves, not get caught up in the superficial matters, to look deeper and past our fears.

It is a journey that needs to be embarked on with just four tools- Love, Devotion, Feeling and Emotion.

Love for self will head the discovery of what you are worth as an individual and enhance the respect for self value. Quite often individual who find themselves in precarious positions tend to loose self respect for self. But by embarking on the journey of self discovery all the boundaries are surpassed.

Devotion should be ardent, often selfless affection as a principle. Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition alone or from a mere sense of duty, it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things in life.

Feeling can be either  good or bad, but on the journey of self discovery the way we feel or our feelings are a natural response to our thoughts and intentions. We do not choose our feelings directly. Our feelings are simply an in-built feedback mechanism. They indicate whether we are moving into alignment with our true desires.

Emotion simply becomes a conscious state of the feelings we have. Why emotions are crucial, it is of importance to note that all battles are fought and won in the mind. Hence the manifestation of the final return to  innocence should become the state of the mind and influence the change that we want to be.

It does not matter where you have been before or what you have done, what is important is who you want to  discover by returning to a state of innocence and overcoming the fear of not knowing what the future holds thereafter.