Best Friends in Time or Experience?

     Friendship is a part of life that seems to help us be guided through the daily struggles and the common successes we may experience. As humans, we tend to befriend many people, leaving a very vague meaning to what really makes up "true friendship". There are those few that we encounter through our lives that seem to really have a certain impact on us. Now this could be negative or positive, but I definitely believe that in the end of the day there is a reason.
    Although many find it hard to believe that there is reason to everything we do in life, I can definitely say that through what I have personally experienced, friendships have always seemed to have a reason, and usually it is one that teaches a certain lesson. People we meet are like drifters in the ocean: One minute we see them, floating by on the surface, and at any moment may be gone and have drifted out of sight. Some of these drifters may challenge us with obstacles and cause us to have to think of different ways to handle a situation and learn from the experience. Others, could actually be there to help us through whatever needs to be done, and once the lesson has been learned, we may choose to toss them back to let them drift off or we may allow them to become part of the select few that remain with us forever.
   This is where the ideology of a best friend comes in. Like I mentioned before, we have MANY ecounters with people throughout our lives, and many of the people we meet are just there for a short period of time. There are others, a very select few others, who we have so much to learn from and so much to enjoy about that we tend to create a special bond with them. I have heard from people, movies, and books that "best friends" develop through a bond that needs to be fermented and grown throughout several years. I do not necesarily agree with this statement. It is true that friends who have been with you for a long time, may personally have experienced your history and may understand what you have been through because they saw you go throught it, but there are also those who went through life, unknowing of your existence, and yet still seemed to somehow experience and grow in an almost parallel if not intersecting manner with you. The fact of the matter is that people do change, and when we meet these people, who we have grow similarly to, it could be that we have met them right as we were meant to.
    The arguement of fate and destiny is a whole other topic that can be discussed for ages, but it is has a very appropriate application when it comes to friendships, especially best friendships. As one of my friends once said, "We always talk about soulmates in love but what about a 'friend soulmate'?". Personally, I think she is completely right here. We dont realize that the friendships we gain throughout our lives are equally as important as the the romantic relationships. I have had great friends, mediocre friends, and even horrible friends, but in the end of they day they all had an impact on the person I am today and what I have learned over the last 19 years of my existence. I believe that we are meant to meet certain people, and it could be at any point in our lives, but when we do meet them we will know that there is that special bond that can almost never be broken and is never really supposed to be broken. Just because we meet someone at the age of 20, doesn't alienate them from the last 20 years of our lives... it just gives them more to learn. When we meet our "friend soulmates", the case will most likely be that even though you may have had different experiences with different people, it is those experiences that made you so similar and brought you to each other in the end of the day.
     As people we tend to give way to much credit to the amount TIME we have known someone and instead neglect the amount of OURSELVES we have truly invested into our closest friends. It may be hard to believe, but until you have met these "friend soulmates", you may not actually understand how you could have so much faith in another individual even by just knowing them for a short period of time. Just like romantic love is meant to come to us and will come to us, true friendship is one that requires patience and anticipation, since, when it is found, it can be one of the most rewarding and helpful pleasures we experience throughout our lives.

The "Exceptional" Rule of Love

The game of love is one that has been played by men and women throughout history. There have been constant battles, figurative and literal, over simple misunderstandings of each sexes true emotion. I have experienced the madness on both ends, the utter lack of understanding that both men and women have of the opposite sex. We seem to base our love lives off of pure assumption, ESPECIALLY at the beginning stages when a relationship really first begins to blossom.

            The one thing that both sexes seem to very frequently do, is label their own experiences as the “exception” to the rule. As a human race, many of us are attracted to what we do not completely understand, while at the same time it scares us. This logic is one that can definitely be applied to the dating world, since even now I can say that it almost excites me to think, “Who will be my next girlfriend?” or the even bigger question, “who will be the one I fall in love with?”. Who will be that person? Do I know them? Could they be even closer than I imagine? The answer to all these questions is: I have NO idea. This is where it kills most people. The fact that they cannot plan a part of their life that is so incredibly crucial to their existence is something that is terrifying and at the same time exciting to many people.

            When I mentioned the “exception”, what I meant was the typical romantic comedy scenario we have been programmed to love. Even men, as much as we refuse to admit it, do look up to movies like “Titanic” or even “No Strings Attached”. Where we go wrong in our interpretation of such films is that we take it as being the rule, where in real life it is actually the exception.

            The one thing that the characters in the romantic comedies, and novels, and stories all seem to have in common, is that they are completely and utterly oblivious to the existence of this “game”. They are the ones who live hardest by the rules, and therefore are the first ones to break them. Just because we want to love, doesn’t mean that it will always magically come find us. As people, what we need to learn is that love is in fact all around us, but because of this “game” that was created along with the existence of mankind, we cannot always sit and wonder why we aren’t a part of that story that is truly the exception to the rule. In the end of day the ones who live strongest by the rule, are the ones who more easily become the exception.

Reputations. A shallow depth of lies

      Why is it that even though we know about the existence of reputations, we still tend to believe any rumor that seems to start one? There is a very distinct form of power that lies in words. As much as mind control may just be a simple superpower in any average comic book, it seems to manifest itself in a realistic form. This form is known as manipulation.
      Manipulative people have the power to sway peoples opinions and thought processes just by twisting their words in just the right ways. It is almost taking away the free will of other individuals, which in turn can alter their whole belief system. This is usually the seed from which a reputation, especially a false one, seems to blossom. The more manipulative the creator of the lie, the more easily contagious that lie becomes. The reason that the rumor to start the reputation spreads like wild fire is because the creator not only tells a lie about another person, but actually makes others believe the lie.
      I have had many encounters with incredibly manipulative people, and still, for as many times as I have caught them in the act, I have seemed to fall right into one of their traps. I have watched friends, family, and even strangers, easily become victims of this complex manipulation scheme, and I have even been the puppet master in several of these instances. Its almost a political scandal, in the sense that whatever you say must always be monitored, because if you have one slip up when instilling a lie into someones beliefs, could cause them to see right through your shallow facade.
     Not only are rumors easily spread, but they are even found enjoyable for many people. With all the tabloids that we have available to the public, celebrity reputations are monitored and altered day and night, and just by the stroke of a single pen. The reason that a reputation is a "shallow depth of lies" is because as much as we might know that they exist, and know that they are actually completely false subjective ideas, we still as a human race seem to fall into this spiderweb of lies and deceiving facts.

Hopeful doubtfulness

I have come across a great many pessimists in my life. They seem to have an answer to EVERYTHING, but the catch is that it's always negative. On the surface they seem to be people who are incredibly bothered and do not have hope for anything good. The thought that just came into my mind is... what if they are actually more hopeful than the rest of us?
They doubt almost everything that happens, but the question is: why? The answer that I could most clearly think of is that because they are always hoping that they are wrong. It goes down to the idea that if you hope for the worst, you will never be disappointed. In the end of the day it's much harder to actually HOPE for the WORST since the phrase is a complete oxymoron in and of itself. How much can one really hope that things end up badly? Since when does hope have such a negative connotation? This is why I think that those of you who have a "pessimistic" view on life, just need to realize your capability of hoping. Instead use hope to your advantage and to grow rather than to hold yourself back from exploring possibilities that you never knew existed. The world is a place for us to grow as human beings, so if we are people who can hope but hope for the worst, aren't we just holding ourselves back rather than causing any real change in the world? Doesn't hoping for the worst in the ordeals of others, make that same individual hope for a lack of progress in their own lives?

Why does a relationship fail?

The reason that any relationship, be it a friendship or a romantic one, fails is because we stop loving the other person for who they are and start hating them for who they ARE NOT.

Why does sex seem to have such a huge effect on emotional attachment?

Sex is when two people are at the closest physical proximity possible. A man is actually inserting a part of himself into a woman, causing them to be as close to one individual as they can be. The issue here is that when people have sex they share not just their physical selves but also a private side of their emotional beings. An orgasm is an overload of emotion, and when brought on by another person, it is that “other person” who gets to experience what no one else does. This is where the attachment comes in. When people see each other orgasm, they share an emotional moment, an almost supernatural moment of ecstasy. When you share something so secret and sacred with an individual it’s hard to not find yourself holding onto that connection. When that connection, or that bond between the two of you, is planted into your mind, it almost always sprouts into a tree of emotional attachment or obsession.

Could love just be an idea manifested in another individual?

Could it be that the reason we don’t get over people we like even when we know they aren’t right for us, be that they are actually just one of our ideas manifested into a human body. Usually we can just push an idea away in our own head and never have to think about it again since we created it, but in this case were talking about a real human being. They become an idea that stays in front of your face until the day they die, which is why it’s so much harder to get rid of them. We don’t just have to get rid of the idea, but instead learn to cope with the existence of that idea.

            And the reason a rebound is what it is, could be because we are just using another medium to test out that original idea. It never works out because what a rebound really is, is a coping mechanism on our part to try and prove that the problem was the idea that we had created and not the original person that we had assigned that idea to.