More Thoughts On Friendship

I recently shared some very personal experiences reuniting with friends after a long period of silence. In my own case, I consider the global distribution of my friends a remarkable and invaluable feature of my life. This a subject I think about quite often of late.

Friends are truly the most valuable of collectibles.  Can we ever have too many? These are our fellow travelers. They know our histories, or at least parts of them, less those parts we choose to omit. They care, more than less, about our health and the affairs of our family. They sometimes confide in us, and they are willing to let us tell them our stories and complain about our problems and seek their advice. Without friends, life would be a dull and lonely journey.

Truly good friends are the richest of treasures. Despite their ability to survive neglect and even occasional abuse, such friendships are to be protected and insured. Think how much effort must have been required to sustain friendships in earlier times. Today we can communicate across any distance nearly instantly, and at no incremental cost. Digital social networks allow us to follow the lives of our friends and provide them a means to learn about our travels and the events of our lives with a minimum of effort. We can even use these networks to comment on and debate the social and political issues of the day, though God knows I wish this practice could somehow be moderated!

Today it is also possible to physically travel across the globe to reunite with our friends. Though the discomfort and frustration levels remain at about the same as those when traveling meant horse-drawn carriages or steamships, we can at least cover vast distances today at greater speed and lower cost than ever. Re-connecting with friends and family remains a primary motivation for travel, alongside discovery of the new—new scenery, new food, new experiences, and, of course, new friends!

One consequence of our modern ability to follow the lives of, communicate with and re-unite with distant friends is that we can now claim a far great number of friends than in earlier times. At the least, we now have the capacity to consider a large number of mere acquaintances friends. A challenge of our time is to not permit the sheer numbers of those we follow to diminish the quality of those few relations that are truly friendships. We should distinguish between “friending” (an Internet-era creation of a verb from a noun) and befriending someone. The former requires little more than a tap on a keyboard or click of a mouse, while the latter is the beginning of a process that may take a lot of effort and time.

As far as I can observe, it appears that even though it is easier than ever to maintain a large set of acquaintance-level and truly close friends, the make-up of both of those subsets remains very homogeneous. Perhaps it is my age; maybe millennials have more diverse arrays of friends than those in my generation. I hope so.     

It is natural that we are drawn to friends with which we have much in common. It is also to be expected that our friendships would evolve from those with whom we have regular contact, our neighbors, our co-workers and those with whom we pursue our common interests. As a result, we tend to have few, if any, friends from backgrounds different from ourselves. 

Given how much those of us in the US remain segregated along racial, ethnic, economic, political, age, gender and cultural lines, it will take some affirmative action at the individual level to cultivate a diverse network of friends. Wouldn’t it be great if some young entrepreneur could develop an app to connect otherwise disparate people with the goal of creating relationships that might not evolve naturally? Sort of a match.com or eHarmony for those looking for friendship rather than romance.

It is the depth and diversity of our friendships more than their scale that will prove the source of our happiness. The time and effort to develop and sustain intense friendships have long been acknowledged to yield valuable returns on their investment. Shouldn’t a similar commitment to diversify our personal collection of friends be rewarding as well?