The Dynamics of Friendship – The Flow of Life and Finding Your Way Back!

 

For me the world is full of friends I have not yet met. Don´t get me wrong. I am fully aware of the conflicts of the world and I have had my fair share of conflict. But when I read a book by Dalai Lama, and found the quote “friends can become enemies and enemies can become friends” it immediately resonated with me. I have seen so many examples of this both on a higher society level and on a personal level. For that reason, I have always been interested in conflict resolution and getting people to understand each other. This makes life so much better!

As a world citizen and family member including multicultural half and step-siblings, I do believe we can see past conflicts and become close, even though many like me who for instance have experienced the death of loved ones knows it can trigger conflict. I believe this type of conflict is not actually about money or belongings, but about the disrupted sense of belonging and the loss of love of the departed. Getting past this is great and brings us even closer. There is something very grounding about going through a conflict and coming out as friends on the other side.

Being the daughter of a world traveller, I have experienced the world since childhood. My father who was from India married my mother from Sweden in the late fifties and moved to a country with very few foreigners.

But he did find friends from exotic places, and I grew up in a world where we shared cultural expressions and loved it.

I am so sorry about the development in the world where there has been so much conflict around race and religion and focus on differences and making people enemies who could be friends.

My father also worked in other countries and continents, and I came to love Africa and African people and ended up with family from Botswana as my father remarried.

As a teen newly home from Kenya I wrote an essay about Africa. The teacher didn´t like my approach though she said she could tell I loved Africa. At that time the perception about Africa was all about war and starvation. I experienced apartheid in South Africa, so I was not unaware of problems and Nelson Mandela is a great inspiration to me as his whole life proves that enemies can become friends.

But writing from another perspective was considered frivolous. I remember my fascination with the intensely blue African sky and how beautiful it was compared to the bleak sky of Sweden. That is also having a rich life! And I fell in love with the loud laughter and the barbecues at sunset. It was easy to make friends though I was quite shy as a young woman.

As a child I went to boarding school in Lebanon and in England and experienced war and conflict as well as the beauty of the sunny Middle east and the warmth of friendly people. Many children from conflict areas ended up in English boarding schools and thanks to Facebook, my friends from Lebanon and England found each other years later. We have had reunions, and I found that a connection formed at an early age, still works even if you have to wait forty years to see each other again.

Many friendships have also been formed during my travels.  I´m a great lover of Facebook and zoom as it has enabled me to easily stay in touch with new and old friends, and suddenly distance doesn´t matter.

As I love meeting new people and I have been around since the sixties it´s impossible to stay in touch with everyone. But friends that touched me are still with me, and come up in my thoughts regularly, so I am never really alone.

Some friendships are really intense during a period in life and can be immensely rewarding, and then replaced by others that come our way. This not meaning that they are in any way replaced or forgotten. I do believe we can love many people and like Deepak Chopra says there is an abundance of love, and we will never run out of it.

I had a dream a few months ago with a very strong feeling about a friend from my teens. Our life took very different turns, and we hadn´t seen each other for many years. But I just had this strong urge that I should call her, and that we had things in common to resolve. I contacted her and it started a very intense relationship based on messenger and long telephone conversations while taking walks in our respective neighbourhood. A very Covid friendly relationship. Despite different lifestyles we connect on an emotional and value level, and experience love and understanding.

I also connect to the world through film and literature from all over the world, and I spread my values about diversity and friendship through books, films, photos and music.

I made a film about teenage friendship and bullying with my thirteen-year-old, daughter Nathalie and her friends. She is now twenty-three and the film is still being shown in Swedish schools and I am proud to influence a coming generation in the art of friendship and conflict resolution. And Nathalies songs connects to people all over the world.

I have also made a short film about diversity in a relationship. One of the main actors is like me half Swedish and with an African father. When on the lookout for the right person I had an impulse to meet up with another old friend and found him sitting next to me.

And all along my life journey, I have my husband who is my best friend since thirty years back. He is with me on my travels and in my projects and since Covid we are together 24/7 which however can be a bit much. Good thing I know friends can become enemies and enemies, friends.

Written by Naseem Quraishi Larsson

Naseem Quraishi Larsson runs her own business Digital story masters specialized in Personal branding.  She has a background as a management consultant in large corporations like IBM, but has the last 10 years been working with entrepreneurs on a digital transformation journey, often while globalizing their business. She is a published author, film producer and professional photographer, based in Sweden but active on an international level.

Week 3, January 2021

Nathalie Veronica music site with video

https://www.reverbnation.com/nathalieveronica

Friend or enemy – Trailer

https://youtu.be/n4ypIcNgaZw

Changes – Short film

https://vimeo.com/268251924/39cbe2bce4

Photo portfolio

https://digitalstorymasters.shootproof.com/

Instagram

@digitalstorymasters

https://digitalstorymasters.com/