Friend"ships" (Sep 19, 2013)

I've been thinking about friendships a lot lately since there is quite some drama involved there. And I prefer it all being smooth and drama free. I'm boring that way. So I've come up with a sort of metaphor to put it all in perspective, if you will.

As you can probably guess from the title above, I'm going to place friends in various ships. It is called a friendship and so I'm taking the word 'ship' separately. I've categorized the type of ships in 3 groups.

• Your good friends will sail with you in the same ship. You are a team and can trust and rely on each other for the optimal survival. You all have various roles, and these could be switched in the team for different situations. This team is strong and usually stays so for a long time. This team does not get renewed quickly; it takes a special kind of person to join, and a very bad situation for one of them to either walk the plank or transfer to the ships sailing next to you, which is a nice bridge on the next type of friendship.
• Because there are several oceans and a lot of water overall on this planet, there are many different ships sailing the oceans. The ships that sail close to you are your friends with whom you hang casually. You talk from time to time and discuss the weather and the tides. You depend on them to warn you from dangers afar, maybe an iceberg in the distance which they passed before you. These ships change regularly and even as you have a special bond, everybody here is replaceable in a certain way, although you'd prefer it all to stay the way it is. Easy breezy.
• Then you have pirate ships. These follow you around from time to time, but could disappear for some time as well. You can never depend on these pirates and you acknowledge this. Pirates are of the deceiving kind; they tend to have submarines which they use to steal the rum from underneath your ship. You've worked hard on to get your rum to a specific quality, or you're still working on it. After the robbery, they disappear because pirates know they would get into trouble if they sailed too nearby when you realize what just happened. Their ships usually are fancy and interesting, and these pirates do know how to have fun. However, you need your rum. You can't afford it being stolen every time. Yet it seems like these ships are connected to yours through some kind of rope. All you need to do is cut off that rope and you can sail faster and more freely, and discover new lands with the joy of that rum which will finally be more to your liking in quality and quantity. However something keeps you from cutting this rope. The humanity of thought about simplistic "what ifs?" is making your sword heavy. Maybe these pirates will change, maybe they will eventually return your rum? Truth is, they simply won't.

<3

PS: Why are pirates so cool?!

PPS: I just realized there are also 'mermaids'... Maybe you already have an idea what type of friends these are.