Acharya Prashant recounts an incident from his school days when he observed a boy and a girl who were always together, laughing, riding a motorcycle, and eating ice cream. One day, he saw them apart and not speaking to each other. When he asked the boy what had happened, the boy replied, "We had a breakup." Unfamiliar with the term, Acharya Prashant inquired further, and the boy explained, "We have decided that we will now be separate." The speaker expresses that he did not understand this then and still does not. He questions the concept of a breakup, asking, "If you have love, can you decide to be away from someone?" He posits that love is a matter of the soul and the heart, not something one can decide to end. If a relationship can be ended by a decision, it implies there was nothing substantial to begin with. Acharya Prashant elaborates that if you can stop yourself after a breakup, it means there was never anything real. He finds it absurd that a couple could be sharing an ice cream one evening and declare a breakup the next morning. He questions how one can simply decide to break a friendship, comparing it to the impossibility of deciding to stop breathing. He argues that a friendship that can be broken by a decision must have also been formed by a decision, which is rooted in self-interest and calculation. Such relationships are transactional, like those with a milkman or a domestic helper, which are ended based on profit and loss. For instance, one might tell the milkman, "From tomorrow, don't bring milk," or the maid, "Your services are not needed from tomorrow," often after calculating that their advance payment has been fully utilized. He defines a true friend as someone who enters your life without permission and whom you cannot remove even if you want to. If you can get rid of someone by making a decision, they were never your friend, and you never had love for them. A spiritual person, after awakening, does not form any useless relationships. However, they do not discard their pre-awakening relationships like garbage. Just as one doesn't discard the body (the most ancient relationship) after awakening, they don't throw away old relationships. Instead, they guide them towards the temple. The speaker concludes that if you and a friend used to go to the tavern together, after awakening, you should take them to the temple. You don't break the relationship; you take their hand and lead them in a new, spiritual direction.
