In this increasingly divided age, I wanted to comment a little secret. Friendship doesn’t have to be an alignment of ideas.

Friendships are meant to expand your mind, and fulfill social needs.

However, the internet has warped us into thinking conformity is needed to establish relationships. Tribalism is a programmed behavior of humans, but so is inter-connectivity, and it’s only through collaboration that we come to the font of innovation.

One of the hardest truth’s to swallow is the idea that you are not your friend’s savior. You aren’t going to convert them through rhetoric, or logic, or simply bothering them until they break.

If you see the world from their eyes for a second, you are the one with the strange ideas. If you go into a friendship with an agenda it stops being a friendship and becomes a project. It’s not longer about mutual exchange of ideas and good feelings about about one person being right and the other wrong.

In order to find common ground, embrace humility, question yourself without having to convert to the other point, and most of all simply be with that person. If they start to go into a conversation topic you aren’t comfortable with, tell them, and ask them politely to not discuss it.

Most of all, focus on your common ground, and remember, that’s a person out there.