I think people have forgotten how to make friends. I know I have.

I have spent most of the last 7 years alone. Why?

Because my mental programs were broken. Neuralink anyone?

Friendship. like everything else needs to be reinvented.

This is what people think a friendship should look like:

This is the super cheesy, overly sentimental way that friendship is portrayed in social media and mainstream consciousness. It's not correct really. You can see in this picture that each person completes the other with equal amounts of energy.

But is this reality?

Obviously, only in very few friendships. No two people are alike. People have different weaknesses, personalities, abilities and strengths. Most friendships are unbalanced, actually. Usually, one person is always searching in the distance for something more satisfying, while the other is wracking his/her brain to figure out how to make the partner stay. I've been on both sides of this deal. It's not very pretty.

Look at the image below. This is how most friendships function.

This kind of friendship is based on dependence. I have been in many of these kinds of relationships. It looks something like this:

In this kind of friendship, one person is generally the giver and the other a taker. Not all are like this, but most friendships I would wager are unbalanced, in terms of energy given and energy taken. And sometimes these roles are reversed, too. Generally, one person is in control. If there is a true balance, then I think you have a rare gem (or you are so much in denial that you think you have balance, but in reality don't.)

I had a friendship a few years ago where I would give way more energy (and money) to my friend than she gave me in return. I was the one pouring her life drinks. As you can imagine, my daily resentment grew until I couldn't take it anymore. The friendship ended in bitterness.

Let's look at a different kind of relationship:

This one is a kind of dreamy relationship.

This is where I really have a weakness. In this type, one person is dreaming and loving the qualities of someone or some creature that is other worldly. This kind is the muse/artist relationship. This one sweeps you away, and captures your imagination in ways that are hard to describe. These are the ones I like because I prefer to be in love with an ideal representation of a human which is ungraspable. I like to be the one controlling the dream, the fantasy and the outcome. There is danger is this one. There is obsession, too. It can drive you mad.

It is this one that has killed me over and over in life.

It is the one that captures both my mind and my soul. It has caused me the most intense ecstasy and the most pain. It is the reason Van Gogh cut off his ear, and the reason people risk their life. There are not many left who even have room in their minds to explore this kind of relationship. It's the kind that could drive people mad. I had to adjust myself from the year 2008 because I became obsessed with a Korean guy I worked with. It was not him as a person i adored, but the manufactured dream of him that inspired me. From then on, I have had to be very vigilant to not confuse people with my imagination. I turned towards art from those days and I left people out of the equation.

The girl pictured above loves the horse deeply because she can never be a horse. She knows the horse is stronger than her and has a different mind, one which will never be fully grasped by her. There is immense respect. This adds to the mysterious energy between them. They have mutual respect for each other, and this is the basis of the friendship. It will never be equal, for the horse will always be out of reach.

Using the horse metaphor, it is my belief that humans manufacture this kind of desired relationship because it is simply more exciting and thrilling. Who wants to roll over for the thousandth time and kiss the same mouth? It gets routine and boring. Advertisers know this. I know this. Everyone who is selling you something knows this. I am selling you something right now: my soul. I decided long ago that I would capture my own energy and use it for something in the future.

That future is now.

The media has slapped that horse mask onto celebrities and you've been eating it up, but you'll never know them well enough to see the edges of the mask. Celebrities are happily wearing this mask. They present the mask, and you buy it, thinking that you're getting a horse. They are happy and you have your fantasy. Everyone is deluded. But this dance is not real. You have given up. Your power is not being accessed. You've traded your nightly dreams for a piece of Paris pie. You sold out your mind. What is required of you is too much, so you just settle for the pre-packed no-feel vest that comes with free shipping for $9.99.

You are a celebrity. Everyone is. You've been told a lie, that Paris Hilton can have everything but you can't. If you stopped today valuing wealth hoarders and plastic barbie dolls, then what would Paris Hilton have? I'm not sure. Her brand would not be worth anything (but she's getting into crypto...so). You can decide your own value and take the necessary actions. No one can stop me from having dreams of changing the world. Even if I lose everything, I can still take actions towards those goals. That is the power of a solid vision. Having money is not the issue. Not having visions is the root problem.

The real issue: what do you value?

I guess I will answer that:

I value the ability of others to make me laugh. (this is actually the thing I value the most in people. Life without a sense of humor is colorless and vapid.)
I value people who know themselves in and out.
I value those who have the inventor's light. (I worked with an inventor in California, and those were the sweetest of days.)
I value intellectual curiosity.

If you don't know yourself well enough to know what you would do with a million, then you have a big problem. A problem that is worth solving now, not later.

You found Steem. By chance we have crossed paths and it's still early in the Steem game.

They are not real horses. Those only exist in your mind.

This is what I want to become: a whole, fully-functioning human being who can easily give and receive. It looks something like this:

My weakness is that I do not know how to receive or relax. I don't like myself enough because my visions of the world have not yet materialized. Therefore I am restless....happiness is only reserved for those who are not tirelessly working towards a new vision of the future.

I want to be more like water, and less like steel.

I want to feel emotions again. All of this mental re-programming that I've been doing is not yet complete. It's only recently that friends have re-entered my mental spaces. I expect a lot from myself and I have not done enough, in fact I've hardly done anything. The only thing I've done (which was in fact the hardest thing I've ever done) which I am proud of is self-published a book in Amazon and learned how to format everything. I got my statement yesterday from Amazon, and looked at the earnings from my Un-Crap Your Life book: $19.10. I don't advertise my book, or do any marketing for it. So, to have $19 appear in my bank account from something I wrote is kind of a big deal. There are millions of things to buy on Amazon, so the fact that a few people decided to buy my book means a lot to me. That book contains my demons, and everything that recently almost killed my spirit. Writing that book coincided with being able to free myself. But none of that gave me financial freedom.

Steem did that. I want never to take it for granted.

So, the hierarchy of needs means that I develop my friendships based not on dependence, but on adding my gifts and being able to receive the gifts from others. I think it looks something like this:

Monkeys who take turns grooming each other. I think that's the best example of friendship worth striving for. The root of my weakness lies in the fact that I have a distaste for the human condition. I always have. Corny, drippy, sentimental trite expressions and thoughts....yuck!. In fact, I hate sentimentality. Clingy people, overly sentimental people are like a plague.....probably because I lost touch with my emotions many years ago and I must hate that part of the human condition.

I'm on my third beer, so I think I'll upvote my own damned post.