Otherness.

Strangeness alienates. But it also fascinates. Without the concept of the other we have no concept of our self. 

So in a sense we are all strange to each other. In coming into your space and encountering your thoughts, I discover the alien. The unexpected. Isn't that what conversation is? A series of random tosses that always ends up different from the linear ping pong that goes on in your head. Part of that is because one can never fully anticipate what the other is capable of saying, thinking and articulating. 

So friendship is this weird game of ping pong. Where the tables are constantly shifting. But that line remains. That line between your court and mine, where your half and mine meet. 

Mystery is essential to maintaining a true friendship. If I fail to surprise you (at turns by bits of information, humour, stories and sparks of personality that you did not perceive in me previously), it means I have become predictable and stopped growing as a person. There is no space of otherness for us to meet and spar at anymore. The tables are removed, so to speak. Old couples are romanticized as being able to predict their other half's next word; at knowing their pasts and the way he or she would react to certain news. But if that really were the case they'd all be bored to death. 

Otherness is an essential space. It is the gap within which we are fully ourselves. Our inner desire to be understood leads to the shrinking of this space, while our contest to maintain truth inwardly stakes the boundaries. Within these poles, our terrain is negotiated. If we expand this space by revealing too little, empty loneliness creeps in. But if we give up our preferences to rote responses, if we cease to be other, we lose our selves. 

#2AMTHOUGHTS.