“Maybe The Real Treasure Was The Friends We Made Along The Way”
“We’re so busy watching out for what’s just ahead of us that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.” — Bill Waterson, Calvin & Hobbes
You probably heard this phrase in comment sections and memes, but this ‘joke’ has a deeper meaning to it.
Remember Mr Fredrickson from the Pixar movie Up?
There was this photo album that he kept as a loving memory of his late wife who dreamed to go to Paradise Falls and she made him promise to take her there.
But as time passes by, she seemed to forget that dream and continued to live a happy life with her husband until the day she passed. Before passing, she gave him her photo album.
The last time he opened his late wife’s photo album, he found out that there were more pictures of them both. As he turned the page, it was pictured after pictures of them both smiling, growing together, and making the best memories of their lives.
When he finally got to the last page of the photo album, it wrote:
“Thanks for the adventure — now go have a new one!”
The same with the main character in The Greatest Showman. At the end of the day, even after the riches he obtained, his friends made him remember ‘who all this was for’ and that his ‘eyes will not be blinded by the lights.’
And that’s the people he cared for the most: The people he helped lift up and most of all, his family.
“The saddest part of life is when the person who gave you the best memories becomes a memory”
When I was a kid in school, I used to believe that all my classmates would keep becoming best friends.
But reality hits and it turns out not everyone stays in your life forever. People moved on and changed, not that it’s a bad thing. But reconnecting would be difficult in the process after that. Everyone must go through this inevitable change, and that’s part of life.
But at the same time, we can’t help, at least for me, but think about the time we used to spend time together before we kind of grew apart. Social media did help me reconnect to some people, but even then we weren’t able to stay in touch.
That’s when the relationship fades, and the names we used to contact slowly turned into contact lists. Friends turn to acquaintances. And the things we used to do together became memories.
In 2019, Maroon 5 made a song called Memories, where he lost his best friend back in 2017. The song was mostly meant for people who lost the people they love very much, but I think it also represents the people we were disconnected from along the way.
And that was what I was thinking about when I listened to the song.
Sometimes, I wish things could be different, and that we can all still maintain our relationships. But change must happen in order for each and every one of us to grow.
I accept and understand that.
As of now, the only thing I can do is appreciate the time we spent together. Past and present, they all helped me shape my life as well.
The ambivalence of Materials and Relationships
There’s this quote called “There’s treasure everywhere” from the classic comic strip of Calvin & Hobbes. The piece of the strip was a story on how the boy, Calvin, dug a hole to find treasures, only to find anything you can pretty much find in the soil such as worms and stones.
For us, we’d picture finding treasures that would be filled with gold and all the riches in the world.
But treasures can mean different things, and it doesn’t have to be gold and riches. It could be anything.
I’ve read the comic books of Calvin & Hobbes, and it’s clear to the boy that his stuffed tiger is his best friend. And most probably the best of treasure he could ever ask for.
In fact, their friendships were the highlight throughout the entire comic strips of Calvin and Hobbes. I absolutely adored their friendships. All the banters they did, the mischief behaviours, their talks, them being there for each other, I love them all.
“Awards are not as important to me as when I meet a 10-year-old kid who says, ‘I love Captain Jack Sparrow.’” — Johnny Depp
A certain place became special to us because of the memories we built together there.
A school is just a school.
But it won’t be just a school if they are built-in memories of the people we were with along the way. There are stories hidden in every corner, and most of the time, the best of them would involve someone.
As the covid restrictions becomes more flexible, I was eager to meet my friends again and walk aimlessly in the malls again. I just missed everything that was outside.
Just recently, I met up with my college friends and we were so upbeat meeting each other. We were so loud and it didn’t feel like we spent eight hours together.
All we did was catch up with each other’s lives and talk about the recent things happening. We kept refilling our drinks as our mouths turned dry every hour as we talked and talked.
At the end of the day, the feeling of anxiety or concerns I felt the days before slowly faded until it turned into a pleasant feeling. That feeling stays, and it yearns to make that connection again. It didn’t cost us a million dollars to get that satisfaction the way we want fancy materials, yet the impact was so powerful.
“Maybe The Real Treasure Was The Friends We Made Along The Way” — Unknown
In movies, when their journeys are coming to an end, the characters would think about the journey they did with the people they were with. They never think about the places they went to, but the friendship and relationships they made along the way.
I adore movies like that very much, and they stood out the most. Avengers, The Hobbit, Warhorse, E.T, those types of movies still holds a special place in me. I think it’s a reason why those films are engraved in the back of my mind.
It doesn’t matter how awesome the CGI is or the world built there, what’s important is the characters developed there. And development needs interactions, the relationship built together.
I think this concept can be used in real life too.
I recently listened to a radio talk of Ricky Gervais about winning awards where he discussed the disappearance of the Golden Globes 2022. And there’s something he said that resonated with me:
“All awards are nonsense.
It’s really nice to be nominated and awarded, but if you take it too seriously, you’re on a slippery slope. You won an award, so what? It should go to nurses and soldiers and people who have really sacrificed all their lives.”
Ricky Gervais said that he had people coming up to him and thanking him for creating the show After Life. He said that people came up to him and shared about their loss and that they loved the Tv show. For him, their responses of them were the most important.
Nothing to do with awards, nothing to do with nominations. Just the responses of people.
A few years ago, I asked my dad where did he put his awards and University degrees as I stumbled across an old photo album where he won several things. And he said that they are somewhere in his old home, probably dusty and rusty by now.
Perhaps you may have guessed that the bottom line to this is the cheesy same old phrase you hear every day: Appreciate what you have today.
But we don’t hear that often every day, and I understand that because we all have our fear of the coming future and we’re trying to be ready for it. We are in the FOMO culture, where we’ll miss out if we don’t join in quick.
Then again, there will be a time when we’d reflect on our lives. Perhaps you’ll remember the places you went, but the most rewarding would be the people we met along the way.
Yea, there may be grade-A a-holes and their superpower is sucking the life out of you.
However, if you find the person you can connect with the most, that feeling is most rewarding. That small interaction is the single most powerful thing in our life.
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