While I feel good to be back on the blog and writing again, I'm a bit disappointed that negative issues drove me back to it. But my thoughts press on.
For awhile now, I've been pondering this thing called friendship. When are friends friends? When do friends stop being friends? When is a friend a real friend and not a acquaintance? Are these questions answered by increments of time? By a list of deeds or lack thereof?
One part of friendship that particularly has been on my mind is the idea of investment and returns. As in, what does each person put into the relationship, and what do they get out of it? I know that sounds a bit harsh or removed from the humanity of relationships, but it's a different type of commerce. For example, if one person invests a lot of time and concern into the other person, yet the other person rarely makes time for their friend, there's an imbalance of investment and returns. The second person invests next to nothing and has a friend who is there for them all the time, trying to help them through hard times, and generally be in contact with them. The first person spends a lot of time trying to be friends with someone who doesn't really seem to care about their efforts, much less offer themselves as a willing friend.
Since I like analogies and allegories, I was thinking about friendships as investments and other investment/financial lingo popped into my head to see if a deeper pairing could be made between the two. I thought of savings bonds. And I thought of the time I got a savings bond from my aunt, and was excited to go cash it for 50$ and buy some toy. Then my mom explained that it's supposed to sit in the bank for a few years, and then it's worth its full value, and then after another few years, it's worth more, and so on. Back to present day: I realize some friends treat people like savings bonds. And why not? They're convenient and require zero-effort-investment, yet promise returns over time. You just pop them in that bank account, and (optionally) can check in on them every now and then to make sure everything's going as planned, and in the end you get something fairly valuable the longer you can string it out!
And let's not forget interest! Everyone wants to get in on an account that has high interest. People seem drawn to friends who are dedicated friends and have interest in the upkeep of the relationship. Whether or not the interest is mutual across several accounts is a different matter altogether, however. There's also a good amount of people who take the annuity route. Annuities are like savings bonds in this situation, but just a bit more generous. In order to keep an annuity friendship running, one person invests small amounts over time. The money in that account busts its tail, making tons of money in interest for the account holder, and by the time the account holder is done and ready to cash it in, well would you look at that! Very little effort and contribution - actually, just the bare minimum to keep the annuity from going under - and it pays off huge. They end up with way more than they contributed originally.
I suppose after enough time of careless bookkeeping in a friendship, somebody goes bankrupt.
