Oyena Gwebityala

I was having one of those beer in hand-around the hubbly conversations that I like so much the other day. And my friend and I were talking about fitting in and this is something I have been thinking about quite a lot subsequently. How do people become cliques, political party comrades, religious organisations?

I thought the answer to this question was simple, but when I thought about it, I did not have a ready answer. My wise friend and I ended the night by agreeing that the wrong way of doing it would be to define ones self according to the group they belong to or wish to join. Rather the group shouldconform to one’s character before one joins it. But how many times do we all end up in groups that don’t conform to our personalities? Remember your friends in high school whom you would not be caught dead with now, remember the choir, the boy scouts (for whities)?

This then begs the question, are our allegiances meant to be transient? And I would say yes, there are people I know I will lose contact with after varsity… intentionally. I think to define one’s self as part of any group forever is tantamount to one saying that they don’t intend to change, surely when you get married for instance your debaucherous friends from varsity might have to go. Of course there are exceptions, best friends, ex-girl friends you might still like etc. But otherwise everyone else goes.

What I am struggling with now is: when does this stop? Cliché: A rolling stone gathers no moss. Do you know the divide by 2, subtract 50 and take the square root rule? Probably not, because I just made it up, but I think there is some truth to it. So if you take the number of facebook friends you have and perform the above mentioned mathematical actions, you are left with the number of real friends you have. I would hate to wake up at 50 and realise this was less than 10.

So as I move up and along and as I shed some friends and pick new ones, I will have my facebook friend list at the back of my mind. So should you