Friendship and expectations

Disclaimer : This blog is not a potshot at anyone, its just an expression of some of my own thoughts !!

Is a friendship meaningful without expectations ? I mean a really good friendship, not the casual "Hi , how are you" type.

According to me , the answer is - No. Without expectations, there is no meaning to a close friendship. Now what are some of these expectations ?

- Belief that if you have a problem, your friend will always be there to listen to you. That you can talk on any topic freely with him or her. He or She will always offer a shoulder for you to lean on.
- Feeling of zero obligation. A friendship cannot be based on obligation. If you are feeling 'he has helped me so and so times, SO I have to help him this time', then according to me the friendship is not working. Friends are there to help one another, there is no place for keeping count.
- Complete trust that you can place your life in your friend's hands and feel absolutely safe. I can count on my fingers of left hand, the number of friends that qualify for this :-)

So why I am thinking of all this ??

We cannot really control what our mind chooses to think, can we ? :-). If we could, many of our problems would just vanish into thin air ...