Notes on Friendship

Some thoughts on friendship have been percolating lately. We saw friends last night for the first time in probably about a month (they tend to be quite busy, while we aren’t usually), and it was really nice to catch up. I don’t have many friends locally; some friends live elsewhere, and some friends I only know online. I’m okay with that, though. Quality over quantity any day. Reminds me of back when I was on Facebook, or Myspace, and everyone was so proud of having so many “friends” on there. I heard somewhere that you can only have meaningful connections with under 100 people or so, but can’t remember exactly what that figure was. I had a lot of “friends” on FB because people would add me, and the system encourages “collecting” friends rather than forging meaningful connections and actual friendships, in my opinion.

It’s hard making friends as an adult. When you’re in school, especially primary and secondary school, friends are largely “built-in” due to being in class with you, &c. Those bonds are forged or shattered arbitrarily by rapidly-changing circumstances, or at least can be. And often they can be extremely fleeting. I can’t think of anyone from high school, even, that I keep up with now, nearly 25 years later. For me, at least, little to no meaningful connections were made there, and that’s OK. Same with undergrad; I can’t think of anyone from undergrad that I keep up with. Very few from my MA program, and also very few from my PhD program. Again, friendships are baked-in, made largely of convenience, and people flit in and out. Perhaps they’re meaningful while they’re there, and it happens for a reason, but ultimately very little of it stuck. I keep in touch with my ex, whom I met during my MA program, and with a select few from my PhD program, but otherwise any friends I make will be new.

And that’s how it is now. If I make new friends, great, but I’m not seeking any out, really. My life is busy enough with my spouse and the kitties, and I generally feel very fulfilled. I work with some very cool people, but there are very few even there I’d like to see outside of work, y’know? But we get along great in the context of work. As far as I can tell, a lot of my work colleagues are FB friends and keep up with each other’s lives, and if I had FB I would probably come across them. But I don’t, and no one has ever asked, and that’s totally OK. I have a colleague from my training group that I chat with daily, and she is great, and honestly I’d be happy to hang out with her outside of work. We’ve talked about it here and there but never anything firm. We also work at different offices, so we don’t really have much chance of meeting up in person for a work context, unfortunately. One of these days we’ll figure it out. We are both into videogames and other nerdy stuff and I think it’d be nice to get together sometime, and I think my spouse would like her too. So that is a work in progress.

I had a best friend for many years, from probably 2001-2015. We talked almost every day, hung out a bunch, &c. &c. We met at church back in ‘01 and were both in school, and were overall very close. This was back in Oregon where I grew up, but even as I moved around the country, we still kept in touch and met up whenever I came back to Oregon. Things soured in 2015 or 2016, not too long after my wedding that he went to, and the friendship fell by the wayside. I miss it at times, but it is for the best that we don’t keep in touch. He still reaches out to my sister from random phone numbers, and I feel bad that she has to deal with it. He was creepy towards her and that was one of the reasons the friendship fell apart, but I won’t get into that.

I have another best friend who is back in Oregon. She is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, and my ex (in Oregon) introduced me to her, and, hilariously, we stayed friends all this time while she did not with my ex. We’ve been friends for close to 20 years at this point (I think I met her in ‘03 or ‘04?) and wow, time flies. I am not always great about keeping in touch with her, but I try, and we text and such. She and I bonded over videogames and TV and movies and other nerdy stuff and she is one of the biggest Batman fans I’ve ever met. Often I’ll come over to her house and play NES, usually Jeopardy Jr., and we always have a great time. We also both love the (PNW) fast food restaurant Taco Time, and usually go there when we meet up. My spouse also really likes her and we are all friends, so that is really fun. I am happy I’ve been able to keep up that friendship; even if we don’t talk for a while, when we catch up it is just like old times. And I love that.

It can be incredibly hard to cultivate friendships. It’s easy to think of them as a garden, which needs first to be sown/planted, and then watered and tended. With how busy life gets, it’s easy to avoid properly tending those friendship-gardens. It’s a two-way street, though, and absolutely has to be reciprocal; both parties need to put in effort and energy to maintain it. And some friendships are lopsided, but can be righted and balanced, and others cannot be, and sometimes wilt on the vine. I know this is probably all cliche stuff but I find it a useful way to think about relationships. Honestly I only have the mental and emotional energy to cultivate a few close friendships, most of the time. Sarah on You’re Wrong About (podcast) was recently talking about “best friend” as a tier rather than one single person, and I totally agree with that philosophy; I don’t think it’s a healthy idea to conceive of one sole person as “best” friend, even though grammatically and logically “best” tends to refer to only one thing and all the others are “not-best.”

I really enjoy getting to know people online, though, and I feel like I have a number of close friends online whom I’d love to meet in person someday. Online friendships are absolutely friendships. None of this “IRL” nonsense. An online friendship can absolutely be “real life.” I tend to think of online vs offline friendships, not in terms of online and “IRL,” which I find unhelpful and dismissive. I had a friend, years ago, whom I met online in the mid-’90s, and while we only met in person about twice (once when I was very young, and again probably a decade or so later), that was absolutely a friendship, indubitably. I think friendships must be built on sincerity; as long as you are being genuine and the other person is as well, then you have a strong foundation to build upon, online or offline. That way, you both are getting to know the other person for who they truly are, not a mistaken idea of them. I know that everyone presents themselves in various ways, and isn’t always showing their whole self at all times (of course not!), but ideally if you start from a place of sincerity, you can do your best to be as true to yourself as possible.

I feel like I want to read more ancient treatises on friendship now. Seneca’s de amicitia (On Friendship) sounds great, and Seneca’s letters also have some great insights on friendship. Many speak highly of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and mention of friendship within, so maybe I’ll have to check that out sometime too. And of course Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, ta eis heauton, lit. “the things with regard to himself”) is well worth reading. I’m sure Cicero has some thoughts as well, scattered across his voluminous corpus. And there are definitely moderns who have things to say about it, but I worry a lot of it devolves into self-help books, which is not what I’m after. Will have to think on all of this. Friendship in the ancient world was an incredibly complicated thing, and still is now.

I don’t know where I’m going with all of this. Just had some thoughts I wanted to share. If you’re reading this, I appreciate you taking the time to look through my thoughts, and hope they are helpful or at least interesting to you. I’m happy to have a venue to jot thoughts down and share them with my friends and the world. It is really nice and makes me happy. Thanks, friends <3