Friends in Odd Places

Saturday night Odin made a strange comment; "you don't have any friends like yourself". I'm not really sure what to do with this information, but it got me thinking: what makes for a good friendship, and how do people connect with those they consider friends? Sunday morning spelled workout for Kristine, Jostein and me, as well as reflecting over the night before in between sets. In reality this means Jostein and I immersing ourselves in a discussion while ignoring the rest of the world, which put us on to our particular brand of friendship and why it works.

It can be summarized as follows. We are both the type of person who tends to speak passionately about things that catches our interest; that being a book recently read, an idea had or observation made. We are also both decent listeners in that we are genuinely interested when people talk passionately about their own interests. In effect, our conversational styles match and add to this a foundation of similar opinions approached from somewhat different angles, and it's easy to see why we get along as good as we do. An unwanted side effect of this is that we have a tendency to block out other people when we start a discussion, much like the way people immerse themselves in movies, books and games while becoming oblivious to the rest of the world.

Much like many people simply accept their family, I wonder if people also tend to just accept their friends instead of considering why they are friends and how they became friends in the first place. Romantic relationships will grow stale when you start taking each other for granted, and I don't see why friendships should be any different.

Here's a thought for you. Get to know your friends again. People change, but rarely does their surroundings keep up. Bad friends can hold you back if you want to improve yourself because they enjoy feeling superior to you. Hopefully you don't have too many of those hanging around. Which brings me to my end quote, one I've always been fond of.

Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.