As a great quote was saying, “friendship is the bridge between Earth and Heaven”; actually, no matter how much you analyze this quote or how much you try to describe friendship in words, they could never be enough to define it. It’s all about giving instead of expecting or receiving; it’s about feeling when a friend is down and visiting him for no particular reason.. It’s about trust and confidence, it’s about sharing, it’s about another kind of love.

But in order to be able to have such feelings, you must first be friends with yourself; a person that can’t be friends with itself, can’t have any other friend in the whole wide world. That’s literature’s take on the subject. Quotes such as “the greatest sweetener of human life is friendship”, or others alike illustrate the special value given to friendship in both classic and modern works.

Psychologists’ take on the subject are, naturally, from a scientific approach – so they propose some theories for defining friendship: rational dialectics, social exchange theory, equity theory, attachment styles and others. All studies have shown that the most important ingredient in a friendship relationship is confidence – it comes to sustain the human in his need to discuss his important intimacies without being betrayed; time is a must in developing such a relationship – and if the confidence is broken once, it will never grow back to the same level that it could have reached in other conditions. Common sense tells us that no matter what we do or try, we can’t put friendship into theory – but some general things do apply.

The word “friendship” itself is even used in some political speeches, as it is a very powerful emotion modifier. People are sensitive about this word, and not at their conscious level – that’s why it’s so powerful. It was even used to define relationships between states, although this unnaturalized the meaning of it in a way.

In the end, we can never tell if this or love is the greatest human emotion; anyone felt it at least once, and you must know its importance; as you also must know the sour taste of betrayal. But these are both parts of life as we know it, and when we draw the line we notice that the world is interconnected through this wonderful emotion.