Have I mentioned (I have) that I spend a deal of time thinking about friendship? I do. I cannot say that I have worlds of experience in the matter; in this respect I may be somewhat like Mike Jackson, who “did not make friends very quickly or easily, though he had always had scores of acquaintances”.
In any case, I do think about the concept—what friendship entails, what leads to it, why I don’t have more experience of it—fairly often. I haven’t yet arrived at any Grand Unified Theory or anything. I still ponder, off and on, what components are necessary. What patterns are there? (I think of David and Jonathan, Bruchko and Bobby, the other examples from history or literature that I presumably could cite if I were more widely read, and so forth.)
And as I say, I don’t have it all figured out. But I consider that I do have one single aspect nailed down for sure. There must be other requirements and I must track them down, but I know that a deep friendship requires for sure:
A friend who speaks just the same about you when you’re present as when you’re not.
Blog Of My Sojourn 