There's nothing as interesting or satisfying as discussing the nuances of a subject that is currently occupying your attention. Also, yes, potentially highly boring to others. But we'll ignore that. Which is why we continue wondering about friends and friendship.

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In the last post, when KM commented that "there's also some who make you go "huh? why the hell was I hanging out with this guy in college?", it touched on something I've been thinking about a lot recently.

Namely, how do we form friendships with certain people?

A simple answer is this. But that's a little too simple. After much pondering, the conclusion I've reached to the above answer is this -

1) Proximity
2) Chance
3) Compatibility

How so? Thus so.

Your oldest...your first friends are likely to be people who lived nearby. They would then be followed by friends from school, then college, then work. And other places you might have lived through your life. 'Tis human nature. You see someone day after day after boring day, and you eventually strike up a conversation, and it goes from there. It's the sheer regular presence of someone that eventually makes you get along with them. And it's only when you have time away from them that you really that, in many cases, you don't really know them, and that you're not really friends, just friendly*.

Then there's chance (and circumstance). Meeting friends of friends. Children of your parents' friends. Relatives of your neighbours. Being introduced to someone at a party. Striking up conversations in a train. At a bus-stop. In the supermarket queue. At a bar. Random, unforeseeable meetings where you realise that the person across/besides/on top of you** is actually worth keeping in touch with.

And there's compatibility. Where you choose the friends you make on the basis of a mutual interest in something. Cricket. Quizzes. Pratchett. Indie-rockers. Food-blogging. Alcohol-photography (heh). Where you decide to go to clubs/forums/meetings where you know there will be others of a similar bent of mind to yours, and you select to become closer to some of them.

Of course, whether these friendships last, or how deep they are, is a different matter altogether.

So. Now you know. Today's "Gosh! That was obvious" session is now over. Please deposit dakshina in the room to your left marked 'Give as much as you can'. Thank you, and many papayas to you.


* Which is why if you no longer live where you used to, and happen to go back, and bump into somebody you spent months and years playing alongside, especially in the long summer days, you sometimes realise you have nothing in common - had nothing in common - except the fact that you could see each other's windows.
** Whaaaat? It happens.