There are many other friendships: some one-to-one, and some in a group. What’s important is that each serves a purpose of enriching life in its own way. We all accept each other for what we are; there is no class or status barrier that limits conversation. For friends, we are just the way we were when we first met. Some friendships may fade away with time, but that doesn’t diminish their importance; every time we have felt lonely, we will find that someone has reached out to us and helped us through a difficult period.
Marisa Franco writes in “Platonic”: “When we have felt connected, we’ve grown. We’ve become more open, more empathic, bolder. When we have felt disconnected, we’ve withered. We’ve become closed off, judgmental, or distant in acts of self-protection. Our personalities, alongside the way we show up as friends, then, are shaped by our past—we feel lovable because someone loved us well. We are prickly because someone hasn’t loved us enough…When we feel accepted and loved, it helps us develop certain qualities that lead us to continue to connect better (the rich get richer, as they say).”
Lydia Denworth adds in “Friendship”: “Invisible but essential, it’s the web of connections we forge with others, the network of individuals whose actions and emotions affect us just as we affect them. We may be separate beings, but we are deeply bound, as if there truly were silken threads tying us all together physiologically. Our personal webs of connection include our family members, our romantic partners, and our friends…A friendship is an organism that shifts its shape across our life spans according to our abilities and our availability—in other words, according to how much we open ourselves to its possibilities. While there is natural variation in our taste and need for companionship, there are some universals in what draws us together or throws us apart. And there is a bottom line—a biological need for connection that must be met to achieve basic health and well-being.”
Science is only now explaining what we have perhaps known intuitively.
Friends can drift apart. It has also happened to me. And each of the few times that it has happened, I have regretted it. It started with something small and then I let ego get in the way and refused to reconnect, ultimately reaching a point of no return. Losing a close friend is like losing a limb. The hurt never fully heals. While time does reduce the pain, there is always that element of regret and the playback of what either of us could have done differently to prevent the break.
Build friendships, and especially some close ones. They will enrich life. Friendship is a two-way street; it requires us to invest time, effort and feelings. While the returns cannot be measured in monetary terms, when we look back at the balance sheet of life, we will find that good friends, rather than money, were what delivered the real joy in our lives.
I hope that each of us can say these words from Bette Midler to the friends in our lives:
Did you ever know that you’re my hero
And everything I would like to be?
I can fly higher than an eagle
For you are the wind beneath my wings
