Friends in the most unlikely places

I waited to post this until tonight (rather than on Saturday as I usually do) due to some pretty important things. Mostly, it would be my first night in a Hostel, and I'm now staying there for GDC, the Game Developer's Conference. I'm absolutely blown away by the comradery of this place, it's unbelievable. Today after a short conversation with two people, I was invited to the Tonga Room in a nearby hotel, a pacific island themed resteraunt. Had an amazing time, and discussed numerous topics ranging from sexuality, to morality, to how to identify with people, to race politics and culture. I'll probably post on these things at a later date, but it is not the topic I wish to pick up tonight. No, tonight I wish to talk about the natural ability of humans to make friends. Even in completely random situations.

Why is that? Why can we humans make such quick and fast relationships? Especially in places that are, by their very nature, places of transition. Buses, planes, trains, and here in a hostel where people stay only temporarily. It is an amazing experience. I think it has something to do with the break down of ideas and boundaries, in this place with four beds per room, each a cubical without a ceiling to separate it from the other bunk rooms, each in one of the single floor bunk rooms (2nd, 3rd, and Fourth, with the 1st floor being a Chinese restaurant). We have so little in the way of normal boundaries, that to become at ease with these complete strangers, we are, in a way, forced to learn more about them, to become friendly, to establish friends, and to live as best we can given the circumstances.

I wonder if that's not always the case during transitions for humans. Times of transition are periods where strange things happen, where our normal laws and rules are obliterated, and the only constant is change. We find that the conventions we can normally depend on in an artificial area, are no longer applicable, privacy is a luxury, not a right, and we cannot be sure of anything that we own will remain our own without protecting it (both in padlocked lockers, and in forming bonds of friendship with those around us so they will not attempt to steal from us).