meeting people is easy

holding on is hard.

Some people hold have friends forever. Witness Jerry and Tedd, who have been friends for at least 16 years now.

For some reason I never have any friends for any length of time. The longest was 8 years I think. Sometimes its inevitable, like when someone moves away. Other times people just grow apart. I've recently realized how easy it is to grow apart.

For example, I no longer see all the friends I met in first year university. I still like them and all, but I never realized how easy it is to be friends with someone who has the same classes as me and lives on campus, and how hard it is to be friends with someone when those factors disappear. Soon contact is lost and before too long neither person cares and its like you didn't know the person.

All my closest friends I met before university. All my university friends that I still speak to are the ones I met in second year.

Another thing I've noticed is that the majority of the friends I've held onto the longest are Christians. This is probably because Christians tend to put a high value on community. That and the majority of my non-Christian friends became Christians recently.

But I need to be friends with "normals." Christians are weird folk. We're told to be in the world and not of it, but I think a lot of Christians aren't even in the world.

A comedian once said of fundamentalist Christians, "Aren't you supposed to be away somewhere? Waiting for the rapture or something? Just go away!"

A lot of Christians tend to "go away" naturally, but not because they are told to by the world, but because we have developed this sub-par copy of the world's culture (music, clothes, tv, books) and called it a "Christian counter-culture," but really its too pathetic to even deserve that name as it tends to be a cheap rip-off of the "real thing."

Wow. Talk about random topic change.

Anyway, the main point is that without normal (non-Christian) friends, I am bound to become brainwashed by the Christian rip-off culture, and therefore become completely useless and irrelevant to God, humanity, and the world in general.

Although, as much as I need normal non-Christian friends, I'd really like it if my normal friends became Christians, not because I'm on some sort of "holy crusade to convert the heathens," but because I really want them to know and love Jesus the way that I do. Jesus is an awesome guy to love and know.

So, well, I guess I want to say, "be my friend." And be my friend for a long time. And I'll put effort into being your friend so that it lasts longer than one year.

Thank you.