in your experience how true is this adage?

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"To Each His Reach"

but.....

Fuck aliens.

People bond with others for all sorts of reasons.

There are romantic relationships that make absolutely no sense, for all but a single through-line.

There are close friendships where people are ideologically diametrically opposed in myriad ways. And there are just as many reasons for the existence of these relationships.

Particularly when it comes to friends from our formative years. There are a few cats that are still, to me, my brothers, but we don't see eye to eye on a goddamned thing.

most of us shed most of those people naturally, just through the course of life being what it is.

But then there are the stragglers, and sometimes those bonds run thicker than whatever differences we have. I have a friend who is my brother through and through, but he gets on my fucking nerves if we spend too much time together. We're that different. Our friendship doesn't make a whole lot of sense on paper, but that changes nothing.

Then there are those relationships where people are 180 degrees apart on serious issues, and yet maintain their friendship. A lot of that, IMO, is due to a largely misplaced sense of nobility toward the notion of being friends with those with whom you disagree.

Personally, I've developed some hard demarcation lines with a lot of things, and then there's that arms length area where I love them but probably wouldn't fuck with them if we didn't have the history we have.

The optics are what they are though. We all make certain baseline assumptions, because "birds of a feather" does carry some weight. But, to view this through the lense of another well-worn cliche, appearances are often deceiving.

On the surface, you might be viewed as one with the company you keep, but perceptions can, do, and should change if/when we get greater context. To that end, why you keep the company you do is what determines whether or not you deserved to be viewed the way they are.

I've been fooled enough to know that first impressions don't mean shit, and I think the "company you keep" line of thinking is in line with that.

I don't speak to provoke. I speak because I think our time is short and each moment that we are not our truest selves, and we say what we do not mean because we imagine that is what somebody wants us to say, is wasting our time on this Earth - C. Adichie

>Then there are those relationships where people are 180
>degrees apart on serious issues, and yet maintain their
>friendship. A lot of that, IMO, is due to a largely misplaced
>sense of nobility toward the notion of being friends with
>those with whom you disagree.

I know there's a sense where people seem to brag about being friends with people they disagree with on political/social issues, but how much of it is people just wanting to brag about it vs it being an actual factor in why they are still friends?

there was some study a few months back about conservatives being more likely to stay friends with people they disagree with politically. talking just anecdotally, i've noticed liberal friends are more likely to brag about how they cut people out of their lives and conservative friends are more likely to brag about staying friends with people with whom they're ideologically opposed

Even with that i don't know how much of it is just that i live in a place where conservatives are more in the minority. I know a decent amount of Trumpsters but not enough that i've really heard things like "If you voted for Biden unfriend me now!". The closest is one friend who i genuinely like as a person but he's always on this conservative victim shit, so his version was "if you really think i'm a racist because i voted for trump, unfren..." Maybe that dynamic flips in other parts of the country tho. i dunno.

I like to think all me friends are decent people but if one does some wild shit does that make me just as wild?

Each individual is kind of responsible for their own behavior. It's a dangerous ground when you're hanging out with people who aren't doing right, though.

Also, as an adult I've seen that if you surround yourself with people who are doing well and heading in a positive direction, it's much easier to do better yourself. With few exceptions, if you surround yourself with shit people, you're probably not going to be wildly happy and successful in life.