Friends

"In the old day's people were real friends".

I can't count the time people said this. Is it true? Was it easier to make a friend for life at the time my parents lived, my grandparents were alive, 500 or 5000 years ago? Did people really change that much if it comes to relationships?

History tells us people lived together.

It was saver to do so. Men were hunters and women became the first farmers and took care of home and children. History did not tell us if these people were befriended. They shared something which was a common interest. The interest in food, staying safe, and survive. If you share a lot of time together you might look close to others but it's not the same as being (close) friends.

For thousands of years, humans struggled to survive.

They overcame wars, storms, ice age, more wars, floods, plagues, and more wars. Surviving is hard work. As long as people are focused on surviving they do not really live. There's no room for small talk, philosophy, emotions during the fight for daily bread, if gods need to be pleased for a better harvest and you have to work together to fight the enemy.

Being - literally - backstabbed by their own kind was the last thing people wanted. The only solution to avoid this was by working together as a group, staying close.

Keeping people close, working together says nothing about being close and isn't a sign of being someone's bosom friend.

A helpful neighbor.

Neighbors can be a big help in life. Especially if you have no family living near. Some have them, others hate them and there are people who would love to have one. Neighbors can help each other out. It's easy to ask a good neighbor for help, you can drink coffee together on a daily base but this is not a sign of friendship. It can be but it's not said that it is.

"It's better to have a close neighbor as a good friend living abroad", is an old idiom in my country.

True or not?

As a little child it's easy to make friends.

A smile is enough or you give the child you like a stone, candy, or frog, and you are befriended. The older you get the more difficult it is to make friends, to be accepted. Suddenly it is more important if you are a boy or girl, so is your religion, are your looks, intelligence, is your race. Society cares about who you like, will fight it, and not understand why you feel lonely.

"You have us and there are plenty of children/people you can be with" is the answer and they expect you to do what you are told to.

Once being an adult it's harder to make friends.

You can not simply say "hi" and give the person you like a lollipop. We have to stick to the rules the society we live in raised us with. If they say it's not appropriate for me to smile at someone I will be punished for that.

It isn't the television set, the internet, nonstop gaming, or our lack of time why we are not able to make friends or a friend for life. Our ancestors worked for way more hours than we did. If they had real friends (like so frequently is stated) we can have a best friend forever too.

Times changed. The more educated we are and the older we get the more expectations we have if it comes to friendship.

How come friendship is so hard to find? Because, if it comes to it, we have a long list with wishes about how our best friend should be and we are not really interested in the relationship, we are not willing to invest time and energy in someone else. We believe if it feels good it is good and... it will remain this way forever.

We might invest as long as it brings us something positive like a good mood, fame, or money. A friendship needs to benefit us just like friendships did in the old days. People started talking more but didn't really change.

Friends.

With so many people in this world and the help of the internet, it should be a piece of cake to make friends, to find people who share the same interests. Sadly enough in reality it rarely works out.

Time and energy are needed in each relationship. Parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, children, neighbors, colleagues, our boss, the doctor, shopkeeper, etc they all need our attention in some way.

A relationship gets exhausting if the friend changes or if we change, if we understand the real person is not the one we have in mind or if lives don't develop in the same direction, the close internet friend turns out not to be real or a friend can't be present in times of need.

If positive vibes change into negative it's a good reason to break up and look for something better.