On Friendship

I'm not exactly sure why, but I got to wondering, "What do our friends say about us? Why do we befriend some people and not others? What does that choice mean?

I think maybe we connect with the people we do because we see something of ourselves reflected in them; something we are or something we want. It's why we tend to be more forgiving of our friends' failings than we would be of the failings of strangers.

That's my hypothesis anyway. As I apply it to myself it seems to fit. Even in the friends of mine that are most different from each other, I can identify that piece of me in them. Though, I may not be the best test case for a couple of reasons:

A) I'm a major league narcissist, so it's no great shock that I see myself reflected in others.

B) I'm a bit . . . picky about who I call friend, so my sample size might be a bit on the small side.

There would seem to be an interesting, additional implication to this idea of mine. Take any two friends, no matter how close, and they probably each have a trait that the other finds at least mildly annoying. It would stand to reason then, if my hypothesis holds any water, that within the two overlapping circles of friends, each person would have someone who'd annoy the hell out of the other.

Just a thought I had.