Three Levels of Friends.
When two people, who are in same class in school, or who get into university at the same year, are asked to define their relationship, people easily reply with the answer "we are friends!". But it hasn't been very long for me to find out that there are different levels of friends. How great it would be if everyone we met in your life is our best friend. But we are not living in the paradise but in reality. Borrowing from Kiyomi Kumazawa, I would divide friendship into three levels (or stages): Acquaintance, close friends, best friend. These three levels are divided right into three levels of pyramid in order in the aspects of both importance of numbers.
First level is acquaintance. Most people in our lives are in this level. It's at the very bottom of pyramid. When people meet new people, they start from this level. they observe each other and see if their thoughts and mind, or hobbies are similar with us. If they don't find anything in common, or they found a clue that we're not on the same wavelength with them, they lose will to keep the relationship proceed. Consecutively, they just remain as acquaintance. So, when they meet their acquaintance, they just say hi passing by each other. They still can talk about something and even share information each other, but as long as it gets longer, it gets awkward too.
When people meets the expectation at the first levels, then their relationship proceeds into next step: close friend. Usually, those people are who we have many things in common with. Hobbies, movie preference or even political party can be on the list. With these friends, people feel comfortable and fun. But, people keep big secrets in themselves and hardly shared them with close friend. It can be a secret about a family, self-esteem issue or heartbreaking story about themselves. As revealing one's deep part of heart is extremely difficult, some people's relationships end here.
Finally, here comes true friend. It's at the very top of pyramid, so people only have a few best friends generally. In this level, people are more like a family than friend. They share almost everything which are going on each other's lives. In this relationship, even the definition of secret doesn't exist. These are friends who they can always look for even when they are at their lowest part of life.
These are three basic stages of friends. People take this stage step by step. To get into the next step, people need certain expectation to meet. But, there always exist exception. Very rarely, sometimes we meet people who can instantly become best friends. In that situation, age, gender or social class does not matter. Therefore, it is the luckiest and most rare thing to happen in one's life. Not to mention, it's done very naturally. No one struggles to make the relationship special, but it comes naturally. A Friend and at the same time a teacher who I love the most whose name is Greg once told me "the thing you look for the most is to come the last" when I was struggling in relationship. It is true. When I force the situation, it will never work out. Sometimes it is sad that we are not as close to someone as we want, but just let it be. The most precious people will ultimately knock the door of your hear.
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