An interesting question and one that cannot be answered easily (and who would expect a laconic answer from a blatherskite like myself
).
It is in a way difficult for me to respond in a way that is neither prone to be misunderstood nor offensive for some people. With such an introduction one might expect me to come up with my usual “scientific” talk about a matter that is way to emotional to be reduced to pure rationality. Nevertheless I think that if I can manage to make one of my hard to explain mainpoints really understandable you may find that it is not based on such cold rationality at all.
Often I am not if "family" is a good term to describe a friendship that is neither the "ordinary every day kind of friendship" (it seems improper to label something as wonderful as friendship with the term "ordinary") but does not have to do anything with romantic love either. Friendship and Family are both totally different and very similar depending on the aspects we are looking at. Some people say “blood is thicker than water”, but I don’t really agree. In my idea of a great friendship I couldn’t care less about whether or not a friend of mine shares my blood. If a good friend happens to be a member of the family, what does it matter when he does?
The term family used on a friendship is not supposed to cover any such biological questions, but as very often these questions are the definition for the term family I don’t really know if the term is well chosen to describe a close friendship. Maybe such a term is not even needed if both friends in such a friendship just have this mutual understanding of how precious that friendship is.
Our member Littlefoot met me in a land before the time of the GOF in Januay 2002. In many ways we had a mutual understanding though sometimes different ways of looking at things. He soon offered me brotherhood and seeing it as a closer term of friendship I was happy and honored to accept it and this brotherhood continues to this day.
Unfortunately I made many experiences where friendship didn’t last or turn out to be what it should have been. Three times I lost people whom I regarded very, very close friends. The first was a friend with whom I had been playing land before time in my kindergarten days (though our friendship was not based on LBT only of course). We were bloodbrothers (and I mean this absolutely literally). But in 1999 he went down a road from which I couldn’t keep him and where I couldn’t follow him. I regreted the breaking up of our friendship ever since and always wonder if I could have done anything after all. To what degree should I have acted more like a friend in that days rather than being just shocked about his actions? Once I send him a letter hoping that perhaps we could meet one more time and at least part in a more reconciled way than we did, but I never got an answer.
The second friend was family, a cousin of mine. He did not share my LBT enthusiasm, but tolerated it same as I tolerated his whims. We were going to highschool together and getting along just fine. After the return from my students exchange I saw him for the first time in almost six month standing in a group of fellow students. I greeted him enthusiastically. He looked at me over his shoulder, said “hello” and turned back. To this day I have no idea what happened, but from that day he would always give me the cold shoulder, but denied that there was anything wrong when I asked him about it.
The third friend was a land before time fan I got to know in the internet. We met twice in real live, we were working on LBT projects, we seemed to understand each other just perfect. And all of a sudden his emails became extremely rare. He had some harsh times and I really did a lot trying to liften his spirits. I sent him a book titled “Kopf Hoch” (“Cheer up”) which I thought might help him. I had this drawing with some text bubbles in the book:
But nothing helped.
At last he sent me a mail which I think was very, very harsh. He did point out failures of mine which undoubtedly exist but failures which I really don’t think are of any significance to our friendship. He asked me how I could possibly be happy with most of my activities being creative rather than social. He blamed me that I rarely met with friends and that he didn’t want to keep contact with me because he felt that I was so different from him.
To this day I don’t really see how the fact that I do not meet with friends in real life very often affected our friendship and looking at that email as objectively as I can I must say that it doesn’t speak much for his own understanding of friendship. I do think that he lost interest in LBT and that this was the main reason for his sudden silence. I regret this very much as LBT or no LBT I didn’t perceive our friendship as something that ought to have stood or fallen with that interest.
With these experiences it is possible that I have become a bit overcautious if it comes to friendships. Sometimes I think I did not pick up a diamond which I found for fear of loosing it again. Sometimes I think I did not pick up a diamond I found for fear of finding a scratch on it. In either case not to pick up that diamond is a rather foolish thing to do.
In real life I am usually friendly to anyone and I am treated with equal friendliness by most people. Nevertheless it is often a friendly but superficial relationship. I don’t have any friend comparable to the friendships in the land before time in real live and perhaps this is one of several cornerstones for my whole enthusiasm for the land before time.
I found many great friends here in the Gang of Five.
Of course I don’t know everyone as well as I know some of you. I got to know people here whom I would loved to get to know better, but who don’t seem to be as interested, which must be respected of course. I also realize that sometimes I may come across as “not as interested” on some MSN chats. Often the reason is that there are so many windows popping up on MSN and it becomes impossible to give everyone the attention which he or she deserves. At the moment I’m quite frequently on MSN due to the fact that until university lectures will start again in April I have a lot of free time.
I cannot rate friendships anymore than I can name favorite LBT characters or movies and I think that my great friends here know about this great friendship same as I do.
There is one friendship here which I want to describe a bit more as I consider it something special because of the way this friendship came about.
I am scary at times. I don’t aim for it, but my way of talking and arguing about all kinds of matters does intimidate some people. Not all of my views are popular and sometimes I am acting in such a theatrical manner that it is little surprise if some people think of me as just plain weird. To others I may come across as something of a cold fish when rationality seems to leave no room for emotion in some of the things I write. Sometimes I’m reading a “lively discussion” where others are reading a “dreadful quarrel”. And sometimes I am perceived just as a kind of boogie man.
One member of the Gang of Five who often doesn’t share my views was scared of me. Nevertheless this member was “courageous” enough to get to know me better and to find that there isn’t so much courage required to deal with Malte. The resulting friendship of this discovery lasts to this day. There are many things we do not agree on, there are very different interests and perceptions of many things and I don’t doubt that, in real life, we are entirely different personalities. But I will always appreciate this member for not allowing the bad first impression of me to remain unchangeable set in stone.
