Unusual friendship
I always start to ponder things when I'm tired. Last night there was a full moon and I hardly slept at all. That is unusual in itself as I have been sleeping pretty darn well here ever since I threw away that piumone horribile. I also had to get up at a number that started with six, ohhh!! My thoughts today were about friendship. What a strange thing that is. Three months ago I talked to someone on the internet mostly in German... three months later I feel so at ease with this friend and he has taught me his language and shown me the most beautiful places of the Ticino. And sometimes I think how weird that is.
There are so many things that speak against us being friends. For once, supposedly friendship between men and women don't exist. We also speak different languages (at least we did in the beginning as we never speak German together) and are from different cultures. And lastly, he's five years older than me. But then with true friendship all these things become so unimportant.
Which makes me wonder what is that thing that we call "friendship"? If it's not in the words, not in the things you have in common (culture), if it's not in the communication (language)... where do we find it? Is it a in-between-thing or is it above all of these things? How have we managed to do this? Did we build all this on meta-communication? I once read that only 5% of what we communicate is actually communicated using words, which would explain how we managed when I hardly spoke a word of Italian. (Which still doesn't explain how he tolerated my abuse of the language... :)
But meta-communication is tightly bound to culture. And that leaves another gap between us... how did we build this bridge? With what? I have written my Master thesis about culture and the concepts of Edward T. Hall and Geert Hofstede. That was inspired by my experiences in the US. All in all I have lived about two to three years in the US. I must say having read almost everything about culture and how they differ and how you define them, I still feel unable to grasp what it is. There are some variables and knowing them helps a ton if one moves to a foreign country... but my favorite metaphor is that it is a slippery piece of soap. If you grasp it to tight, it slips away. But that's also the magic of it. And maybe the same thing is also true for friendship...
There are so many things that speak against us being friends. For once, supposedly friendship between men and women don't exist. We also speak different languages (at least we did in the beginning as we never speak German together) and are from different cultures. And lastly, he's five years older than me. But then with true friendship all these things become so unimportant.
Which makes me wonder what is that thing that we call "friendship"? If it's not in the words, not in the things you have in common (culture), if it's not in the communication (language)... where do we find it? Is it a in-between-thing or is it above all of these things? How have we managed to do this? Did we build all this on meta-communication? I once read that only 5% of what we communicate is actually communicated using words, which would explain how we managed when I hardly spoke a word of Italian. (Which still doesn't explain how he tolerated my abuse of the language... :)
But meta-communication is tightly bound to culture. And that leaves another gap between us... how did we build this bridge? With what? I have written my Master thesis about culture and the concepts of Edward T. Hall and Geert Hofstede. That was inspired by my experiences in the US. All in all I have lived about two to three years in the US. I must say having read almost everything about culture and how they differ and how you define them, I still feel unable to grasp what it is. There are some variables and knowing them helps a ton if one moves to a foreign country... but my favorite metaphor is that it is a slippery piece of soap. If you grasp it to tight, it slips away. But that's also the magic of it. And maybe the same thing is also true for friendship...
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