On friendship

What it means to be a friend

I first thought about writing this from seeing someone else’s Substack post about friendship: it distinguished between a friend and an acquaintance, and how people fall into one of those category (with very few people falling into the “friends” category).

There is a danger of presenting friendship (or anything, really) as such a dichotomy: it categorises people way too generally.

To recall a quote that I saw from on a wall in RGPS 10 years ago:

“Friends come and go, like waves of an ocean, but true friends stick to you, like an octopus on your face.” - Anonymous

“Stick to you”, of course, takes on a different form; most of my friends are more than 13000 kilometres away. The friendship isn’t maintained because I am around them all the time, or even that I tell them about everything that goes on in my life (that would take up too much of our time), but the belief that we will remain as such. And tehre are so many things that remind me that my friends still care about me:

Take, for example:

On average I talk to one person per week about my Substack, most recently:

You guys really indulge me in terms of this silly little Substack account. I mean, I don’t think my writing is great, but I know that I have friends who do read my Substack and from this I know that they care about me.

I am so lucky, to be surrounded by people who care about me. To feel their warmth even though we’re half a world apart.

I think there is something very dangerous about being very selective about one’s friends, it’s so hard to discern someone’s genuine personality from a first impression. Reflecting on my own experiences I’ve always enjoyed getting to know people better before making a judgment on sustaining the friendship; I suppose that’s why I seem to have a lot of friends. I do like it though, knowing more people and more stories.

It’s true that some friendships decay over time, in no part due to either party but rather the passage of time. Some of my friends have indeed come and go, but the memories remain. It’s what I continue to carry with me.