Since it's 3am right now, I have some thoughts going through my mind now.
Hahahaha been a long time since I've slept at this hour and this timing brings me back to the time before I entered uni.
Which is around 2 months now.
From my facebook, I have 1143 "friends".
All these friends have different meaning in my heart.
And they all belong to the different circles in my life.
Personally, I feel that as we grow older, it's harder to make close friends.
And most of your close friends are generally from like primary school / secondary school.
And I somehow have a theory for this.
And I'm going to break down these 4 phases I have in mind.
Phase 1 : Meeting
Phase 1 of making a friend is meeting.
This is very different from when we were less mature and now that we are more mature.
When we are young, anyone that talks to you is a friend.
Anyone in your class is a friend.
Anyone that plays hopscotch with you, eats with you in the canteen is a friend.
Is really that simple.
And we don't even have to see whether this person has similar interest in you.
We accept him for who he is and that's a full stop, he is your friend.
Now as we are more mature, we still meet people in your life.
However whether you accept him into your circle or not depends on age, gender, interests and so on.
So because of this filter, we make friends of similar ideologies and this is considered the turning point where not everyone you eat with or play with is your friend.
But rather, it can be considered as an accompany instead.
Phase 2 : Judging
So phase 2 of our friendships go to judging.
Judging is considered a process whereby you go through even deeper filtering.
This phase has different lengths for different people.
For me, it's a little longer.
But generally, it stretches from when you meet this person for at least 4 to 5 times already to a few months down the road.
It takes time for us to judge a person's personality and behaviour.
And this phase is the time we do so.
Everyone starts to judge whether this person is "cool" enough or "famous" enough for you.
And whether there would be any benefits to knowing this person.
As the number of meetings grows, the rejection list expands.
It could be a mutual rejection (which is a better one) or one sided rejection.
One sided rejection sucks because the one getting rejected feels really bad.
And I can assure you this rejection process didn't really occur when we were young.
But as we grow older, we mature and we also became more selfish.
Putting people into this rejection list if we deem he's not fit enough to be in your circle.
And the idea that "I can meet more people with this personality of mine."
Another factor that adds to the judging process would be experiences.
Most of us have probably gotten rejected by some particular circle of friends in the past.
This creates a fear of going through the same feeling and hence, we really become very careful in choosing our group of friends that we meet.
Because of this process, painful situations may occur.
People get hurt.
Fake laughter appears.
But this process starts to pull friends into your circle of friends.
Friends you won't mind having a meal with or going out with.
This process is known as the judging.
Phase 3 : Testing
I would like to call the third phase testing.
This phase is called testing.
It's still quite similar to judging but it's a little different.
This testing phase is really a thin line from judging.
But this testing phase only occur when you feel that this person seems to be worthy to share your troubles with.
And you start testing him.
You share secrets with him.
You share your feelings about the people you meet in the judging phase.
You start to become very close to each other.
Spending time with each other at least once every week.
But the true definition behind testing happens when this friend starts to meet more people in phase 1.
And he starts his own rejection period in phase 2.
And whether or not you stay in his close circle or not depends on phase 2.
He will bring you back to his phase 2 and judge whether you are a better friend or he is a better friend to have.
And when he has made the decision that you are indeed still a better friend, you will stay in his inner circle of friendship and you all will still meet up very often despite of busy schedules.
These friends that have passed your testing test, you will treat them as a very good friend.
Whether or not he also put in the same effort to test you and put you into the inner circle is a different thing.
He could be your phase 3 but you might still be at his phase 2.
But nevertheless, you've probably found a good good friend that is worth all the time to meet up.
He's the one that you will look for when you are down.
He's the one that will lend all ears to you when you want to talk.
And if it's a mutually phase 3, then it will normally lead us to phase 4.
Phase 4 : Part of you
This final and last phase will probably take years to nurture.
And it's the phase where both of you survived phase 3.
This friend will become part of you.
They will become your BFF.
Literally "Best Friends Forever"
You share similar thoughts about friendships, families, etc.
There's just too much in common with this person.
This person will definitely be your wingman during your wedding day.
And you'll be so happy to have met this friend years ago.
Because you can't live without him anymore.
This friend has survived the tough journey towards the core of your friendship circle.
He survived the judging and testing phase.
You all have gone through a lot of obstacles.
And finally, you are part of him and he is part of you.
Didn't expect to write this for so long.
I guess the atmosphere at home is perfect for writing and thinking.
Hahahha.
I'm very tired.
Going to sleep first.
CIAOZ
