So how would anyone define friendship?

If I draw inferences from One Piece which uses words like tomodachi or nakama which mean friends and partners, friendship is like helping one other to achieve their own goals.

It would be important for all the participants to have goals. It can’t be friendship if participants are just working towards a common goal. They can be either rivals or subordinates and obviously not both.

If everyone is working towards their own personal aspirations, everyone would have to overcome their own differences and their own difficulties.

Friends would, of course, help their friends in overcoming them but in the process they need to accept the shortcomings and problematic aspects.

And this lays the foundation of trainwreck theory of friendship .

That everyone of your friend is a trainwreck with their own problems and aspirations and dreams.

This isn’t purely my own thought. I remember reading an FB post about relationships and how choosing partners are like choosing trainwrecks you want to deal with the whole of your life.

I feel this is not strictly confined to relationships. I mean, what is relationship other than a glorified friendship with an added responsibility/perk of sexual interaction.

Bottomline, you have your own things which define you. I am not talking about physical qualities but mental stuff, communicative things, behavourial things which are part of your personality.

Your friends bear that. They accept those things and expect you to accept their own shit.

No one actually gains anything out of these acceptances. Each of the friends will continue to pursue his/her own goals. But, any good that comes out is the collective good which helps the whole gang advance and also the insurance that protects each of them against matters outside of any individual’s control.

This insurance is a touchy and delicate matter and can be dealt in a separate post. It can’t be that friends will definitely provide cover. Everyone is out here fighting for their own goals. One will (and should) only help if one can. And, friends will ultimately help with a higher probablitiy but that probability is not $1$.

So, then why have friends? The answer cannot be as basic as “Human beings are social animals”. Anyone who says that never really spent quality time with friends. Friends help you realize your trainwrecks and let you drop more of your trainwrecks on them. The world is such a big place and your trainwrecks are just not expected to be put on the world. Friends form this environment where you can work with your trainwrecks.

Lastly, although I dub this theory as trainwreck theory which kind of gives it a negative connotation, this isn’t purely negative. This deals with the individual trainwreck-y part and also the collective good that comes out of it. But, since the bulk of any interaction benefiting all the parties involves overcoming individual trainwrecks, I decided to name this theory as so. Also a word of caution that I may have biased myself by thinking that any individual is defined by his/her trainwrecks.

Hmm, I may be just rambling words now (see tags).

You can only be grateful for the things you have. And, I am grateful for all the squads I have.