On Friendship

Friendships are built on a lot of things. 

There are the big things: shared joys, shared sorrows, having each other's backs in hard times. There are long conversations about the challenges of life and about learning and growth.

There are the little things: shared jokes, laughter, books, stories, adventures. There are long conversations about mundane things and long car rides and ice cream and quiet times just being together.

While friendships are generally build on come commonalities, there are also differences and those are good too. We don't have to like the all the same things or have the same lives. The differences may be enough to surprise people, but they work.

There are friendships for a short time and friendships for a long time. I had friends in university who were for that time and then we drifted apart. That was okay too. We had been friends and had shared a time and it was good, it was fun, and then it was time for all of us to move on to another life.

I used to think that I didn't know how to make friends. My friend group was very small and I often felt on the edge of it. That eventually changed and now I have so many people, and I understand what was going on in my early years. When I was younger, I was at a small school and I was different. I didn't fit in, and I thought it was my fault, that something was wrong with me, but I didn't know how to change. As I got older, I people who were my sort of different, and others who are not but who are okay with my kind of different. I didn't need to learn how to make friends and I didn't need to change; I just needed to find my people.

I still only have a small circle of very close friends, and I like it that way. I also have a huge circle of good friends, people I like to be with. I look back at my younger years and I understand and I want to tell the children who don't quite fit in with their peers: Be patient. Your time is coming. You will find your people.

“The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”...[I]t is there that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude."

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves