Nowadays, true friendships are hard to come by.

In our generation where spreading animosity through sub-tweets and Instagram comments is more common than smiling at a stranger on your way to class, our so-called “friendships” tend to fizzle out like the latest fashion trends and start anew like fresh, hopeful rosebuds in the spring in the span of a few days or weeks.

They stem from desires of quick fixes of our past friendships and then onto the next when we find the smallest flaw. But then again, isn’t that just the world we live in? When everything around us is so fast pace and replaceable, why would we expect our friendships to be any different? Why would we expect the same people who once built us up to tear us down? After all, it’s what we do to everything else: forests, animals, playgrounds, factories, technology. We use and use and then tear down when the next best thing arises. So, I ask again, why do we expect our friendships to be any different? Why would we expect unconditional love from friendships that began under endless conditions?

The answer lies in our natural human tendencies. We want to believe the smallest ounce of goodness will result in a triumph of the human spirit. We want to believe in what we see in the movies, an idealistic phenomenon that friendship lasts forever and pain from losing those friendships is short-lived. But, more often than not, we are wrong. More often than not, we get burned and have the emotional scars to prove it. But, we do continue to forgive and forget. Why is that? Is it because we all have some sort of short term memory loss causing us to forget all the mistakes a person has made and all the damage they have caused? No, it is much simpler than that. We want so badly to find real friendships. Real support. Real trust. Real laughs. Real shoulders to cry on. Real feelings. Real unconditional love. And when we find that, even for the shortest time, it means everything. It means more than our Instagram likes, more than popularity, more than money and more than power. Friendship means unconditional love, a gift that cannot and will not be granted more than a few times in a person’s lifetime. At the end of the day, no matter what age, race, religion or even species, true friendship is a testament to fate’s most valuable and transcendent gifts to us all.