I got to know a friend of a friend today, and it helped me realise the real reason for making new friends. I suppose some people make friends because they enjoy collecting people for their social circle, or maybe building up a useful network. But the deeper reason, I think, is so that we can reinvent ourselves. Old friends have already seen the side of us that we have constantly shown them, and there's this mental image that they have of us, resistant to change. Likewise, for the sake of nostalagia or security, we prefer our friends to stay the way they are. And when one of them does something completely different from that mental picture, like buying a bikini, for instance, it stuns us for quitee a bit.

So with someone we're just getting to know, we start making the changes that we've always wanted to make, and give a different impression. More talkative, upbeat, even spicy. But then the problem is, what kind of person are you really? The one you just invented, or the one that people have always seen you as? Or an amalgamation of both? This is starting to sound like a KI essay, so I will desist.

Man, I'm tired