Tag: friendship

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.

Speaking of friendship. The brilliant and hilarious Shawn Powers, a couple of years ago:

It’s those people that make me both happy and sad in equal measures. I want them to be in my top cake layer, but I don’t interact with them often enough for me to feel comfortable leaning on them. They don’t know me well enough (very likely my fault) to lean on me when things get difficult. I WOULD totally be there if/when they need me, and I’m pretty sure they would be there for me — but again, I’m so bad at letting my guard down, that most people I consider friends don’t fully know me, and in turn, I don’t fully know them.

I think about this kind of thing a lot.

Read the whole thing, I would recommend.