Friendship Part 1 – Geographical Convenience

Friendship is perhaps one of the toughest things in life to try to understand, well actually people in general are the toughest things in life to understand, but platonic relationships are just more common than other types. I mean there is an entire show dedicated to showing how "friendship is magic" in which friendships are tried and tested every episode, and more of the essence of friendship is explained and understood. In any case, after a lengthy discussion with a good friend of mine, I put forward the question of criteria. Everyone selects their friends based on differently ideals and I think such ideals are important in the sort of friends you end up with. Due to the complexity of this issue I think I might actually, for once, make this a multi-part series on my thoughts into friendship.

Failure

If only life were so simple as to always ascend upwards and to be relentless in its constant reaffirmation of happiness for all - but life is rarely like this. For the bulk of us, it seems that life is one harsh defeat after another. As my sister always says: life is like a business cycle, going up and down periodically but in the long run, hopefully slowly rising towards happiness. A quote my good friend likes is by Confucius: “our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do”. How we deal with failure is a large part of life and i believe i can safely say that i do not deal well at all.

General Relativity

So it’s no doubt that Einstein was a genius, achieving so much for physics with his one grand notion that time itself was relative depending on your movement. He did far more than explain something that was physically accurate but also explained something that is psychologically true as well. When you are bored and not “moving” much, time seems to go at a snail’s pace as you stare at the second hand tick by, however when you are out and about having fun with friends, and “moving” - time seems to rush by and you wonder what happened to the last few hours. Funnily enough, psychologically, time is relative as an inverse of Einstein’s physical general relativity.

Opportunity Cost

There come times in one's life that really allow you to ponder on some of the abstract models that you have been taught in schooling. Indeed, for me, it was the split second decision of either going to the toilet and relieving my busting bowels, or making my train, with the next in 15 minutes.