Friends, How Many of Us Have Them?

DISCLAIMER: this post was not written with foul inspiration stemming from an event or person. it's simply a train of thought i've been carrying in my mind for a little while hence it's erratic flow. bare with it, please. it's thoroughly sincere.

One thing i've noticed over my 29 years on this planet is that all of us are more or less the same. we all need to eat and breathe, we all have things we fear and love. we all need each other in one way or another.

it's in the details where we can become vastly different from each other. our fingerprints, our dna, how we are raised, where we are raised and by whom. these things alter who we become and the variations of these outcomes are infinite.

if i were to clone a caucasian version of my baby self and plant him, let's say in russia, i would imagine my cloned self would be a much different version of me, but would still somehow be me. i wonder how my likes and dislikes, my habits and personality would be different and how they would be the same.


that being said, i wonder if my friends would be similar to the friends i have now. we choose our friends by common interests. all my close friends are freakin hilarious and most of them love music. in fact, i have friends that became so because of our similar tastes in music and with some of them i don't think i've ever even talked about anything else.


my whole life, without realizing it, while growing up, i've automatically been drawn towards the people that make me laugh and share a similar sense of humor with. i moved around a bit and when at a new school after the initial awkwardness and shyness i made friends by cracking them up. the ability to make people laugh has served me very well in my social encounters. (if only i could somehow transfer that to this blog. being funny and being able to write funny are two completely different things, the latter being much harder.) maybe a little too well. some days when i don't want to laugh or make someone laugh, i get a lot of "what's wrong?" "something bothering you?" those questions are really what bother me. anyway, i'm losing my focus again.


i love my friends, no question, but sometimes i think if i stayed in vancouver and grew up there, would my friends really be much different from the ones i have now? i know we all like to think we're unique, but are we really? as great as my friends are, there's probably a guy just like "mike" in vancouver, in any given neighborhood. there's probably a "me" somewhere in brazil blogging bout his friends right now. only the minor details in personality are different right? maybe the other mike likes something this mike doesn't but the mike's all over are pretty much the same. are we really that lucky to have the friends we have, like we think we are?


did i just cheapen the value of friendship?
a lil bit, a lil bit. sorry for febreezing away that essence of friendship we all hold dear.

time, i think is the biggest factor in friendship or any relationship for that matter. either time spent with or time spent apart. i have friends from as far back as elementary school. i like to think i'm loyal but really i probably just have abandonment issues. which is why i think i don't like to lose touch with people. with time we realize the ones that are going to stay around. i have some friends now that have been my friends forever and are so just because of that fact. sometimes i feel if i were to meet some of them now at this point in my life, i wouldn't dislike them but i wouldn't think we would become as close of friends as we are now. so are we close friends then?


i have friends i seldom see anymore. with some, when we finally meet, we don't miss a beat. it's as if nothing's changed, we're on point with each other like tip and phife. and at the same time there's others that remind you why you don't see them that much anymore and why that fact is no longer bothersome.

the time together is why russian mike is unique from my mike. there's a reason why i want mike to come to the concert with me, to read what i read, to watch what i watched, to listen to what i listen to, to not read what i write.

you might feel, after reading this that i have no respect for friendship. you're wrong. i love my friends more than family. i chose them.

experiences shared is what makes our friends unique.