How do you explain friendship to someone?
What is it? Is it a mutual liking between two people which you don't really have to point out, because you just sort of know?
Yes, wait, of course it is.
Okay, so maybe the right question would then be, what makes someone your friend.
Like, how do you know?
Would someone you decide to help find their way to a pharmacy count as your friend? You'd never see this person again, but you did play a role in their life, and even if it's a small role, it might have been an important one.
And what about those people whom you see everyday but you hardly say anything to besides a monotonous, "Hi, how are you?" to? Are they your friends? Don't you still end up playing only a teensy role in their life?
Heck, you might have paid a more important role in helping a stranger whom you'd never see again find a pharmacy, than in just saying "Hi!" to someone every single day.
So what now?
Is it when you share an experience with them?
I think it's amazing how much an experience you mutually share can shape the way you see people. The mere atmosphere in a room can set the difference in how you perceive a person, and that's both amazing and quite sad. Amazing, because of how little you really require to decide on whether you like a person and if the person likes you back, and also sad because of how little you need to decide that you don't like a person.
I'm a little weird in that sense. If I see someone doing something I don't personally approve of, I try not to judge them based on that event; because of two important things. One, you CANNOT and will not EVER be able to judge an entire person, an entire human being, with their own little passions and faults and happiness and mistakes, based on one single action which they might never repeat again. And two, you don't know what made the person do that action that you so highly disapprove of. As the saying goes, "You do not know a man till you've walked a mile in his shoes." So who am I to judge?
However, if I find that you like something that I'm passionate about (like books, and the same kind of music, shows for example), I wouldn't even think twice about anything else; I will instantly let you into my life and share as much of it with you as I possibly can, simply because you find the same things interesting as I do.
It's not really that weird, I guess. I'm just trying to be fair, honestly.
And take that wondrous bond that you seem to share with total and complete strangers in extreme situations--may that experience be highly positive or highly negative--we all instantly become connected to each other somehow.
Take concerts, for example. You're in a room/open-to-sky arena, with hundreds of people and you're all here for the same thing; to watch your favourite artists perform. You don't even have to know the name of the person, or people, who're standing around you to have a good time; we all sway to the music, sing the songs out loud and share endless smiles and you never want this moment which you share with people you've never met, to ever end, and for a second you feel like it really never would, and everything's great and everyone's amazing, and every single soul in that place is your friend.
And that, is just amazing.
If you don't find that beautiful, that we're willing to set all our differences aside for a moment and just take time out to have a good time, then I don't know what to say.
I'm sure there's a meaning that's very deep behind how and why people feel such an instant bond with complete strangers, but I don't know what that is, and I think that's a matter of, 'to each his own.'
And maybe you can't explain what it is.
And maybe that's what friendship means.
NOTE: People might say that this is because music doesn't care about who you are or where you're from, and that it's music that brings us together; which I agree 100% with, but also, it's not just music that can bring about such emotions.
A roller-coaster ride can.
And so can a terrorist attack.
