Why do you want a friend? Is it because you are lonely? Is it because you depend or rely on them? Is it to have companionship? Is it out of your insufficiency, depending on another to fulfil or fill that emptiness, and therefore you are using, exploiting another to cover your insufficiency and utter emptiness, and so call that person a friend? Most of us are lonely, and the older we get, the more lonely. We discover our emptiness, what it means to be lonely, to have no friend at all because you have led a superficial life and invested your thought, your feelings in another. And when they go away or die, you feel so lonely and empty. Out of that emptiness, there is self-pity, and then you again begin the game of seeking somebody to fill that loneliness. Can you see all this and learn from it? Learn what it means to be lonely and not escape from it; look at it, live with it, see what is implied so that psychologically you depend on nobody. Then only will you know what it means to love.