What do people think of when they claim to draw boundaries among people, grouping them as friends, don't matter ones or even as enemies? How does one get bothered by the relations he/she has with a certain people while being indifferent to everyone else? And the most confusing and sad part, how do people lose the label of 'friend'?
The answer, according to me, lies in basic human tendencies and a certain econimic concepts! It lies in the way people connect with others, share common interests/thoughts/views; it lies in opportunities that people get to know each other and finally it dies in expectations. It is, though undesirable according to me, but inevitable that one forms a hierarchy among all others and is therefore more concerned about and biased towards certain people. Till the situation of being 'king of good times' is concerned, everything is like heaven about friends, can't live without them. However, once the expectations cross a threshold is when even heavens appear to be hell, when things like ego, scepticism and hatred arise.
People differ in their concepts of friends. Some think that the whole point of having friends is to have fun and enjoy life and handle difficult times alone, not expecting it to be a duty of our friends to be with us. However, some think that it is in tough times when friends get separated from real friends. Whatever the view be, ultimately it comes down to one latent objective inherent in everyone i.e. self interest 'expected'! There is nothing too hard hearted or grave about this but for the word 'expected'.
Expectation, again being a real world thing, is badly contaminated with subjectivity. People differ in the amounts of expectations and also in the ability to either kill those expectations or to face the non fulfilment properly. Many a times it happens that we've done a lot for someone so he/she is bound to do something for us and many a times we expect a lot from someone even if we don't deserve it. In first case, when one does something for someone, there sure is a worth but the worth is worthless when returns are expected out of one's acts and the second case is even worse where there are unconditional expectations.
Now having established the existence of expectations among friends, it is not that hard to know the reason why friends are lost. However, it apparently is very hard to ensure that it doesn't happen. Back to the main question of who is considered as a friend and what are the norms of friendship, there again exist various views about what one looks for in a friend and to what extent can one be open to a friend. We never realise when we cross the thresholds and when we lose out on people. The reason why such weird thoughts are being blogged by me is that somehow, notwithstanding the subjectivities, friends are those whom everyone values and the ones who don't are the one who don't have their definition of friends and thus, it is pretty sad if friends have differences for a ground as frivulous as over-expectation or ego hurt or casual annoyance. The secret lies in maintaining good relations with people and that's how i personally put friendship as having good relations with an element of likeness and trust but no expectations.
