Friendship
I just came back from a wonderful two-day trip with some friends. Old friends and new friends.
It got me thinking about friendship. I once read that friendships were notable in that there is no obligation to enter or maintain them. Contrast that with family. Of course you love them, but you kind of have to love them.
Friendship is different. If a friend is spending time with you, it’s because they want to do it. There is something special about this. Particularly at this point in my life when I and many of my friends have young children. The opportunity cost of time with friends has never been higher.1
I am grateful that my friends choose to spend time with me. But as I reflect, it’s not just gratitude…it’s pride. I am proud that these people enjoy our time together enough to spend their limited free time with me.2
Interestingly enough, I have learned to appreciate friendships by watching my family. My parents have friends who have become indistinguishable from family. I once (somewhat frustratedly) asked my Dad why he and my Mom were hesitant to move to California to be closer to us. He said, “Son, your mother and I have friends in Chicago whom we’ve known for 50 years. They take care of us and we take care of them.”
You may have heard this expression: “friends are the family we choose.” I believe that’s true. But I would change it slightly.
I think that friends are the family we earn.3
1 h/t to my friend Jeff for this phrasing and insight.
2 I hesitated to use the word “proud” here, lest it be misunderstood as some sort of status thing. But I decided to leave it. It’s how I feel and my friends will understand. For the single best meditation on friendship (and so many other things) I’ve ever read, I’d encourage you to read CS Lewis’s The Inner Ring. And if you don’t ever read it, at least read this paragraph:
“And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.”
3 Those who know me know that I believe that earned success is the key to happiness. Tell me a better reflection of earned success than the people whose love you’ve earned.