On friendship.

To really be friends with someone, you need to fall in love with them a little first.

Hear me out.  In my experience, the difference between a good friendship and a great one is in the details - the common language, the shared experiences, the emotional and temporal availability in times of need.

The groundwork is laid when you take an interest in someone.  When you like someone, enjoy someone, you pay attention.  You listen to the words they say, the things they tell you.  It starts out simple, the things that make them happy, the things that make them angry or sad.  You absorb these things, memorize these things.

And you spend time with them.  Whether it's across the table at a cafe or through a window on your monitor swapping links, they become part of your week, part of your day.  You remember what you talked about last time.  You remember what makes them laugh.  You take an interest in their life, listen to it like a story, ask after it to learn what happened next.

And as you get more and more tangled in each other's lives, as you share more and more of yourselves, you don't just learn about them, you start to understand them.  Their motivations and aspirations become clear to you even when they're unclear to them.  You can see what's good for them and what's bad, and if you're particularly adroit, you guide rather than steer.  You figure out not just what to say to drive your point home, but how to say it to make it stick.

And you start to sacrifice parts of yourself for them.  You put dinner on hold to listen to them talk about a shitty day.  You adapt plans to accommodate dietary restrictions and preferences without really thinking about it.

And you forgive them their trespasses.  The little iniquities and habits you'd find annoying in a stranger become endearing in the person you care about.  You don't mind that they forgot the five bucks they owe you because you were going to buy their sandwich for them anyway.

And you begin to think of them first.  When you wake up in the morning after a long conversation at night, you wonder what they're up to.  When you see them again, you ask "How are you?" rather than talk about yourself.  When you think about them, you don't think of how they relate to you, you think of them as a person with needs and wants.  And you put these needs and wants in front of your own.  Not because it's the right thing to do, but because it's what you want to do.

And I ask you this:  Is that not love?