Friendship is complex. Like any other human it is born, reaches peak and dies. Wait a minute, did I say friendship dies ? Do friendship really dies ? To answer this question, lets have an academic analysis of friendship. I am going to classify friendship into four phases.
1. *** : This is the moment when two persons meet as potential friends. This phase is quite influential in the future course of relationship between those two persons. Each of the two persons form an opinion about each other.
"Wow, he is so funny, I don't know from where does he get all those jokes."
"He is so cool, he doesn't even care what other people think about him."
"He seems quite arrogant, quite boastful about his knowledge."
"What's the problem with this guy, he is so creepy"
"He is so shy."
Though this opinion might change over a period of time, still this first opinion carries a lot of weight. After all first impression is the last impression. This phase results in birth of friendship.
2. Infancy: This is the phase when both persons involved start to know each other. Whenever they talk, they get to know something more about each other. In this period, each one of them is extra careful about friendship and the friend, so as not to loose any of them. They are most of the times a little more formal in this phase. This phase is marked by thoughts like,
"Does he likes me or not ?"
"Did I hurt him ?"
"Did I say something wrong ?"
"May be he do not likes such behaviour."
3. Youth: This is the phase when you reap most out of your friendship. You share jokes, play pranks on each other, get help, give help. Sometimes you hurt your friend, then apologize. Activity and energy is the key characteristic of this phase.
4. Maturity: I could have called this adulthood, going with naming scheme but I find this name more general than adulthood. At some point of time, usually because of a big change in life, the activity of the youth phase starts declining. There are some *things* more interesting and more important to our friend (or to ourselves) then playing pranks and sharing jokes with old friends. As a result we still remain as close as ever but still we don't share everything, we don't play pranks, we don't bother each other much. Sharing less is an exponentially declining process. As you start to share less with someone, you will share even less about your next time you talk. This is because, by nature humans are lazy so you don't want to start the story right from the start just because you want to share. Even after all this I believe, this maturity phase is not that all bad. You will find your mature friend with you whenever you will need him.
This is for all my friends with whom I have enjoyed youth phase of the friendship and entered into maturity phase. Our friendship has not died its just grown up from pranks and jokes. Talk to you soon.
