Close friends or acquaintances?

Being back home in New York, I couldn’t help but start watching a Russian dating show my mom watches in the evenings.  The format of the show works like this: a bachelor (male or female) comes to the show along with two friends to help in selection.  The bachelor meets three perspective future wives or husbands, each one having two friends as well.  Then the bachelor decides who is the better fit and chooses that person.  What I found interesting is that usually the friends that come along are described as life-long.  There are times when the contestant brings his mother or a sibling, but for the most part, they’re friends that the contestant has known since early school.

Now, if I went to the show, I probably wouldn’t know who to bring because I have a ton of friends, most that I met over the coarse of travels, my ex-roommates, even my ex-coworkers.  I do have few friends that I’ve known for a very long time, but constant traveling and moving around made constant day-to-day keep up difficult.  As a result I have a large collection of friends (perhaps not best friends but more than acquaintances) all over the world whom I still keep in touch, and I know they wouldn’t hesitate in hosting me should I ever I step into their city.

An easier question would be, if you were going to get married soon, who would you invite?

It’s a question I always ask myself to gauge the quality of friendship.  Now it becomes a much simpler question.  My list of friends would definitely include some of my past traveling friends that I’ve met all over the world.  I’d invite my ex-roommate in Rio, some of my friends from San Francisco, a couple from New York, and perhaps even some from Europe but only if I see them again.  I used to know this guy from New Zealand in Rio.  We trained together, went out, and played poker weekly.  When I came to Miami, we met again.  It’s funny how seeing a person more than once, usually in a different place, solidifies the friendship more.

So people would usually fall into two camps: those with closer but fewer friends like the Russian dating show or the TV series Entourage, or those with a longer list, but weaker friendship.

So while it’s nice to count on one or two close friends with whom you can discuss anything, nothing beats traveling through a country and meeting a local–who happened to be a friend of yours in not too distant past.