Friendship is perhaps one of the most complicated things to talk about. I mean, what is friendship? I think everybody has been confronted with this question. Probably many, many times. And I think we have all asked ourselves if friendship is something real or just a sort of illusion.
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I think we all want friends, or a friend. But actually, in the course of having or experiencing a friendship, one probably often asks, wonders, what it actually means. Because often a friendship doesn’t entirely for a 100% “deliver the goods” we look for.
When a friendship has been “sealed”, being “best friends” it means the world. It gives meaning, and especially when we are still young it looks like being forever. It perhaps might be, but reality is that it seldom is.
What do we actually want out of friendship? What is a friend? I suppose it’s something like a close emotional connection, a kind of deep intimacy, someone who we trust, someone to whom we can communicate and share our uncertainties, problems, fears, but also our happiness and joy with. A friend is also someone who helps us when we are in need, and we — as a friend — help our friends when they are in need.
We ask a lot of friends. And they from us. At the same time we also realize that there are many kind of “friends.” Like “partial” friends. Like the friend at the office, our neighbor-friend (or may rather acquaintance), the friend we go to parties with, or hike with, or chat with about philosophy, or whatever. Partial friends.
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Family, well, they are also friends. Or supposed to be. Isn’t that what being family is about? Being close, reliable, and intimate friends. Help each other, listen to each other, be there for each other. But yet, how often family becomes a nightmare and rather a disguised enemy instead of a real friend?
But somehow — at least for me that is — we also crave for this “total” friend. But is it possible? A total friend. I think it can happen — for instance in a love relationship, or maybe with “the one friend in a lifetime” you cross paths with.
But, you know, friendships are not static either. What can be a very tight friendship at one point in your life, can change entirely, becoming “unfriendship.” For many reasons, by the way. Your friend has changed or you have changed, your values or views on life have changed, or because of having moved to another country, in fact, well, we do change, and we may go into other directions and don’t find (enough) common ground any longer to “maintain” a friendship.
Or sometimes a friend (or you) makes a mistake, one that hurts the other, and hence an action or reaction has come about that perhaps changes everything. And it does happen that we can just not find the ways to “fix” it. We are all human after all.
Now, at 56 years old (or young), I look back, and see the many friends I had. Many. Really so many, mostly because I moved around a lot and traveled, having lived in many countries. I had many temporary and many partial friends. And those I thought were “friends forever,” those I knew since I was young, with some of them even having a relationship with for over 50 years, well, they are no friends any longer. Unfortunately, but reality.
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Apart from my loving wife, the one who came into my life in 2015 — becoming my all time best, totally super friend — I can truly say that I had only one other entirely real friend, one I could unfortunately enjoy for only four years because he suddenly died of cancer. And what a friend it was — a teacher, companion, a joy.
Yet, even with him … I had this one time struggle threatening our friendship, but one we luckily overcame. And then again — if he would have lived another ten years we maybe would have lost our friendship — for whatever reason. Who knows?
I don’t want to speak lowly of some really good friends I had. They were crucial in my life. And I’m still very grateful. But the many efforts on my side (and probably the efforts from their viewpoint on their side also) to maintain the friendship have failed. Today, I have only one friend. My wife. She’s just simply perfectly wonderful and fills all the gaps the other friends made in my life.
But things go. Friendships come — and go. So much I know. Even your life partner, your truly loved one (if you have had the luck to find him or her) will go by either you dying or the other. It’s part of life. It’s also very much part of bit by bit saying goodbye to life. It’s realizing that you were born alone and will die alone. Living is a very individual endeavor. We can imagine or wish it to be a “social” thing. But in the end … it isn’t.
