This post started out as a response to a tweet I saw on twitter - the account is private so I won't post a link, but the gist of the tweet was to ask if you need to impress someone in order to gain their attention, were they truly worthy of your friendship? This is my response which has mostly gone unedited.
Yes and no, impressing someone shouldn't be a requirement, but if you don't stand out in some way you don't get noticed. People use different ways to get noticed, some use their looks, some use brains, and some use wealth. What you choose says more about you than who you try to impress. A friendship can be initiated by superficiality but it can't be sustained by it, what really matters is where the interpersonal relationship goes and whether there's a depth that develops. How the friendship was initiated in time will become circumstantial and almost entirely irrelevant. A true friendship will last if that depth comes to mean more to them than peacocking that was employed to gain their attention in the first place.
