there's a line in the book "the body" (by stephen king) that stayed with me long after i read it. looking back on his childhood, the author states "i never had any friends later on like the ones i had when i was twelve. christ, does anyone?".
friendships at twelve do have an innocence that withers with the onset of adulthood and its' accompanying self-awareness. things start to get in the way. reality bites, so to speak. people grow up, get jobs, get married, get lives. eventually we come to understand that basing "grown-up" friendships on childish needs no longer works.
being "best friends" 'cause you both like ice-cream and ant-farms stands no chance once the yawning divides we call tastes, opinions, convictions and emotions begin to emerge. yet we need these things. our values, morals, beliefs, circumstances, choices and tastes make us who we are.
generally speaking, as an adult, the strength and number of your convictions is in direct proportion to how lonely and misunderstood you will be. if you possess anything much deeper than a garden-variety ignorant view of the world and its' occupants, then chances are there are some people who will use that as an excuse to dislike you.
hope makes you strange. i know this for a fact. i've been dodging the word "weird" most of my adult life and i have come from experience to attribute this to my stubborn clinging to the belief that people are essentially good. i find it near impossible not to see at least some good in almost everyone. whilst that doesn't make me exactly naive, it does leave me vulnerable in an odd way.
i'm all too ready to believe in the rights of others, even to the point where their right to expression actually interferes with my personal comfort. it is a rare person who can successfully circumnavigate their way through the bordering-on-ignorance idealism that is my idea of thinking and not walk away feeling at least mildly frustrated.
cavernous gaps open in my arguments. my illogical devotion to such outdated concepts as empathy make me a conversational non-event to the rapid-fire thinker. i think they want to shake me to wake me up. in a world full of knowledge, i remain steadfastly devoted to satisfying my own curiosity, as limited as it is.
i simply see no point in knowing things outside my interests unless they are somehow relevant to my survival. as far as i am concerned, people who think i should be able to regurgitate impressive "quotes" or defend indefensible actions in order to be a sought-after dinner guest are people who'd most likely put me off my food anyway.
thinking the way i do has few rewards. i know more than a few people who walk around knowing they have well and truly gotten the better of me and will get away with it. my tendency to examine motivation also alienates a large portion of the people in this world. circumstances and emotions are things i understand. rules may be rules, but reasons are also reasons.
the rewards being few in number is well compensated for, though. i really know the people i know. and they me. for example, the man sitting next to me right now, (speaking, on the assumption that he can be heard ?, to a magazine), may call himself "notsohighly evolved", and i am convinced he even means it, but nothing could be further from the truth.
i am no good at dinner parties, this is true. my political knowledge would be lucky to rival your average amoeba, and i am not easily provoked into lively and argumentative discourses at the best of times.
my interests are horribly unfashionable and my menstrual cycle seems to be backwards (around once a month i start acting nice - it lasts about a weekend). these things are not high on most peoples' lists of desirable qualities in a friend.
luckily for me then, marco isn't most people.