How people label friends is intriguing to me. You probably hear the term often in conversation. "I was talking to a friend of mine." "I have a friend at work who also plays golf." "One of my friends from college is getting married next month." 'Friendship', like 'love', 'relationship', and perhaps any other word that expresses the degree to which we are interconnected to someone near to us, carries many interpretations, meanings, values, and variants depending on the person using the word. Of the many issues that I have struggled with in my life, defining friendships has been foremost among them, both directly and indirectly. So here are some thoughts.
For some people, a friend is simply a person who talks to them more than once or maybe it's a coworker that survived some intense project with them. For many, friends are people that they have fun with -- the other members of a softball team or the drinking and dancing crowd on the weekends. For others, friendships are implicitly defined -- family, members of a religious congregation, or family friends -- where friends are defined by a serendipitous and assumed association if not through any direct experience or effort. There are probably hundreds of ways that we meet and find our friends. What I find especially fascinating is how people relate to someone that they call a friend.
One theme or heuristic that I've seen people use, consciously and not, is the notion that the people you're around are resources. People form relationships and friendships to obtain something. This is natural and probably evolutionarily sound. (It's also very academically abstract and devoid of emotional meaning but bear with me here.) Dr. Robert Axelrod, a political scientist, once conducted a series of computer simulations based on the Prisoner's Dilemma. Basically stated, there are two prisoners who are being asked to testify against the other prisoner. If neither of them testify, they both serve relatively short sentences. If one testifies and the other doesn't, that prisoner goes free while the other is left to languish. If both testify against each other, they both suffer long sentences. Phrased another way, a mutual reward might be worth $300. However, if A acts in his own interests, A receives $500 while B, trying to cooperate, gains nothing. If they both try to gain the $500 reward, they are penalized $1200. The result of the simulations showed that the very nice algorithms, the ones that always tried to cooperate were inevitably weeded out by the nasty algorithms. Curiously enough, none of the selfish, 'take all the money' algorithms did well either. The ones remaining were variations on a kind of 'give as good as it gets' algorithm or 'tit-for tat'1. Apparently a good characteristic for a species is to develop mutually beneficial relationships. While it would be a drastic generalization to apply this to human motivations, there are some good parallels to how people treat their 'friends'.
Perhaps the least desirable 'friend' to have, or the most reprehensible depending on your point of view, is someone who views 'friends' as resources to be exploited. These are the people who will always take the $500 over the mutual $300. We all do this to a certain extent because, in a society, we necessarily depend on each other to get through life. But if a scale were to be established, these would be the kinds of individuals who give Machiavelli a bad name. I suppose these kinds of people are tolerable, from a societal standpoint, when paired with one another in a mutual take-and-take. I find these kind of people entertaining because frequently they attempt some form of just-in-time friendship development when they need you the most. "Hey buddy! How's it going? Haven't talked to you in a while. Say, you got a minute..." It's fun to see them contort and distort some perceived relationship with me to get what they want. Sometimes they're not so transparent and I've lost the number of times that I've seen people taken advantage of by these human sharks. Think carefully, you probably know one or two and have hopefully sent them on their way.
More common are those people who base friendships on the superficial connections. I call these people acquaintances because the friendship never really goes beyond the polite chit-chat and professional or activity-oriented discussions that began your interaction with them. There are degrees of acquaintances, of course. Some of these people are good people to talk with and some even turn into friends. There is some give-and-take on this level with degrees of equity. Mostly, these are people that fill my world but have a kind of transient presence and impact in my life. It sounds rather cold and impersonal but it's kind of a brutal reality that I won't get to know everyone well.
Then there are people that you've been hanging around with for a long time. You've been doing things together for a while and a deeper relationship grows out of those shared experiences. But sometimes, even decades of association can't take a friendship past a level of more-than-casual association. Not every pairing results in a friendship of depth, as many couples discover to their dismay.
Somewhere above acquaintances are those people that I start calling friends. Defining a friend can be very difficult but for some reason you intuitively know who your very good friends are. If we use the Prisoner's Dilemma, then a friend is someone that you know will spend that extra shortened jail time with you, not only because they know that you won't try to take advantage of them but because they know that the time will be well spent.
Sometimes friendships are so simple and deep, it feels like you're picking up where you left off a dozen incarnations and lifetimes ago. The chemistry is so effortless that you almost begin to believe in the notions of soul mates, psychic connections, and past lifetimes. You know each other's interests, hopes and fears, and communicate on a level that some married couples never see in their lifetimes. In some instances, you even know how the other person is feeling or when they need consoling on an unexplainable intuitive level. You may find this person to be a better friend than people you've known all your life. These sorts of friends are very rare and indispensable. You may not have a friend like this in your lifetime but you'll know one when you find one.
Then there are those friends who have proven themselves to be reliable and trustworthy in both the good and bad times: the ones who are so reliable that you know that they'll be there for you from halfway around the world if they have to walk to get there. I call these 'back-to-the-wall' friends because when your back's to the wall, you know they'll be right there with you to the bitter end if that's what it takes. These are curious sorts of friends. You may not share the same interests, like the same movies or books, eat the same foods, or even have the same kinds of beliefs. But you trust these people implicitly to do the right thing when it needs to be done. These are uncommon friendships because they require a certain level of altruism and mutual self-sacrifice that we don't often find in ourselves except in the midst of a crisis or over a series of troublesome experiences. They also take a long time to build up that degree of mutual trust. But having friends like these makes the world feel a little more secure.
Somewhere after the friendships based on psychic chemistry and long-term trust are those friends who are valuable because of the kinds of connections you've established together. It would be rather pointless to create artificial categories to define types of friends because it's not that important. It's sufficient to say that most of your friends are not quite back-to-the-wall but much better than acquaintances.
If I had to define the quality of a friendship in any meaningful way, it would have to be the amount reciprocal effort and caring expressed; how well two people connect and seek connections with each other. Often, people forget that good friendships, like gardens, take maintenance, understanding, and effort. Things change and people change. Sometimes friendships require redefining or struggles to persist and mature. In those moments, only deep communication and connection will help to see both people through the difficult moments. A great source of despair for me has been in watching friendships and relationships fall into decay or that become stagnant because people take that valuable connection for granted or are unable or unwilling to invest the effort.
Naturally, the best friendships survive when both parties proactively seek to enhance and mature their relationships. They anticipate or sometimes intervene in crises. They periodically call or write or talk. They know to send reminders that they value the friendship. But people have different capacities, resources, and awareness for being proactive. Some people are better at being opportunistic friends. When the occasion presents itself, they rise to the occasion and pitch in with some project or with the consoling pat on the shoulder. They may not keep abreast of events in your life but they're there when they can be, showing that they do care. It's the little things that matter: short letters or emails, brief phone calls, and even dropping off a snack. Not all friendships need to be 'best friendships' or strongly proactive but it's important for both people to contribute. The little things that friends do for each other remind us that we are never truly alone and that there are people who value us for who we are. Robert Frost in "Mending Wall" talks about working with a neighbor to fix a wall that has fallen into disrepair because "something there is that doesn't love a wall." Friendships can suffer from distance, busy schedules, work, and other important things. But if "good fences make good neighbors" then good connections make good friendships and require regular 'mending'.
Sometimes, in spite of the effort, a friendship fails to survive a crisis. The effort has to be mutual and when it's not, because of neglect, change, or the destructive nature of some moments, the friendship wastes away. Perhaps this is a natural state of affairs. It may be an unconscious way for us to say "I've learned and gained all I can from this person and it's time to move on and seek new experiences." Unfortunate, but very real and very human. Sometimes these crises are precipitated by moments of tension and significant change. In my own life, I have times when I'm feeling very human, very tired, and occasionally alone. I forget to take responsibility for my choices and, instead, lash out at some perceived inequity between what I give and what I receive. Occasionally, I've spontaneously burned bridges out of frustration then regretted my actions in hindsight. In these dark moments of personal crisis, exacerbated by self-imposed isolation, I forget that part of being a friend is asking, trusting, and allowing other people to help. Friendships have to be just as much about receiving as it is about giving and, fortunately, my friends have been very patient through these storms.
But despite all that thought, struggle, analysis, definition, and stratification, one inescapable truth remains: I value my friends and our connections. If I have a single valuable lesson to give to someone reading this bit then it's to seek and maintain your friendships. Humanity may never achieve peace, global understanding, or universal harmony but you will share a deep personal interconnection with a few other souls in the Universe. There may be no greater meaning to Life than that. Over the years, I've become friends with some very interesting, thoughtful, trustworthy, honorable, funny, intelligent, insightful, spiritual, compassionate, wise, artistic, entertaining, and loving people. They are precious and irreplaceable to me and I can't imagine what my life would have been like without them. I like to think of Life as a journey that we make from birth to death. We sometimes place too much emphasis on the short destinations along the way, forgetting that the destinations only mark where we've been. Our journey and our traveling companions -- our friends -- define our souls.
