What is Friendship? You Are All My Friends (Mi Amigos)

You are all my amigos (friends).

I was told once that I couldn’t have a friend whom I never met in person. I was told the people I talk to online cannot be my friends because I’ve never met them before.

I am not here to define what is right or wrong, that is up to each individual to decide for themselves. However, I will express my emotions towards what I feel will help my friends seek out other friends by viewing the world from a different perspective.

What if we treated everyone we met as a friend, as an amigo? What if there was no such thing as a stranger for we are all friends in that we all have something in common; we are all human. Every person you meet on the street, every person you interact with online, every person you talk to you on the phone, every person you see in the mall, every security guard, every government official, every soldier, every indigenous culture, every tribe, every elder. These are your friends, these are not your enemies, these are not strangers to you, these are people who represent humanity, these are people you know and these are people you trust. A friend is someone who you know and trust. So how do you trust someone you first meet? How does a lie detector work?

A lie detector monitors your heart rate, in other words it determines how nervous you are, or in other words it tells you what your EMOTIONS are. If you are able to determine someone’s emotions, either by what they say to you online or by their facial expressions in person then you know deep down how that person is feeling and therefore you KNOW that person in that particular moment in time. They are your friend for the period of time you are communicating with them. So then what is a stranger? The common man would say that it’s someone you don’t know. What don’t you know about them? You know they’re human and you can tell through their emotions whether they’re feeling happy or sad. What else do you need to know in order to consider them not a stranger? In a sense, your best friend is a complete stranger because you can never know everything about that person. What did they just do an hour ago, a minute ago, a second ago? What is the break even point? When does the person move from being a stranger to becoming a friend? How much information do we need to have about someone before they become our friends? Isn’t having a common lineage enough? For if they are not our friend then they must be an enemy. Are we to treat anyone we don’t know, every stranger we meet and every human being we run into on the street as an enemy because they are not our “friend”?

In that case we would create a lot of enemies because it would seem as though everyone is an enemy. Is this how we want to view the world? Is this the kind of experience we want to create for ourselves? If we would like more friends then how do we make more friends? If we simply changed our beliefs into ones which say a friend is someone we can connect with on an emotional level then our friendship would expand instantly. Our friendship would extend to the dog who wags its tail, to the cat who purrs, to the rabbit who jumps gleefully through the meadow twitching its ears as it hops, to the whale who joyfully flies out of the water and finally to the person with a big smile on their face when they see the ocean for the very first time.

Our emotions reveal a lot about an individual, more so than words or sometimes even actions can. The people who have difficulty expressing their emotions might also have difficulty making new friends or in keeping their old ones because emotions are what DEFINE a friendship. Emotions are the glue which bonds two entities together in friendship.

Wouldn’t it be appropriate then to say if you can read someone’s emotions then you know them on a very deep level which allows for a bond to be formed much like a friendship between two “strangers”? You have now just formed a friendship with a complete stranger because you now know them on an emotional level. Wouldn’t this be a more appropriate way of defining a friendship? Wouldn’t this allow you to create more friends not only with others you can have a conversation with but also with every living creature? Speaking with your emotions doesn’t require an education, it doesn’t have limitations and it eliminates all barriers. It is the ideal form of communication and everyone has it. The only secret is that not everyone knows or is consciously aware that they have it.

Emotions allow us to see right through an individual. It’s very difficult if not impossible to put up barriers to your emotions. If you are upset you will cry, if you are happy you will smile and if you are sad, you will frown. These emotions are what describe a person. These emotions allow you to know a person. These emotions are what create friendships.

Stop seeing others as something separate than yourselves, stop seeing others as people you don’t know, stop seeing others as strangers, stop seeing others as enemies for we are all friends, we are all amigos (Spanish translation for friends). Express your emotions, create friendships, live life to the fullest, create the world of your dreams. Be creative. Be yourself but most importantly free yourself of the walls you have created for the strangers you’re trying to keep out might someday become your friend.


Your Amigo,
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