The Impossible Friendship

One of my old friend just got married, and I got upset because of it. Not because I am against marriage or what, but because of his not telling me a tiny bit about it all along.

Does friendship entail some responsibility, like the right to know something important in each other's life? We write emails sometimes; actually, we just exchanged information on email like a month ago. I checked his reply two times, thinking maybe he told me already, but I found nothing of the sort. No mentioning his girfriend or fiance or marriage plan, not even mentioning any of his new relationships in his new environment (he became an assistant professor in a university in the US while I'm still in China), I know it's not my business but, I mean, cmon. 

From a certain age we'd start to realize friendship fades away pretty easily. Easier than family relationships at least. Even earlier we'd start to understand what true friend means, I mean the ones we feel we share the same values, worldviews, and can tell each other our deepest hopes and fears. This friend of mine is like that, at least used to be, or so I would think. 

Or maybe friendship ceases to be an equal relationship, or never has been? Maybe there's a hierarchy in frienship, and when you're in it, you're either the ruler or the ruled. For the ones above you, you try to share your deepest secrets with them, hoping to get their attention, even admiration. For the ones below you, things are quite the opposite. You have the privilege to ignore them once in a while, to share relatively trivial parts of your life and hide the more intimate parts from them. I am not even talking about any interest involved in a relationship. I suppose the two friends are pure friends in the sense that they expect nothing other than the relationship itself from it. Still, the hierarchy is there, because we all have preferences on a deeper level. 

Maybe this is the real reason why true friendship is rarer than ever before. On the one hand, we value equality too much, especially in a relationship called friendship, to be taken advantage of, looked down upon, ignored. On the other, we find it hard to keep up to the ideal image of friendships, to take up the responsibilities ourselves to care for our friends no matter what. The art of making friends is long lost. For my part, I consider myself a very poor friend to have, because I am too selfish, too self-centered to care for any other person's dull life like a good friend. So, at the end of the day, I guess I do deserve this.