Hello readers. This week we have a new contributor to the blog – Reese, who has given her perspective on our latest prompt about friendship.
I would say that my friendships, more specifically the people in my life, are the most defining thing about me. If I had 20 minutes to tell a stranger exactly who I am, I could tell them that I live in New York City, that I am a college student, that I like to dance, or that I have dreams of becoming a public interest lawyer someday, but they still wouldn’t know anything about me. Instead, I would tell them about all the people I love in my life. After all, all I am is everything that they have made me.
I believe that one of the finest joys in life is understanding how someone else sees the world – and true, genuine friendship aims to do just that. When you become friends with someone, you not only begin to understand who they are, but why they are, how they became, and how they see the world. In this sense, to love someone is to understand them.
For example, I personally feel like I could write books about each one of my friends. My friend Caroline is the most curious person I know. She relentlessly strives to understand the world around her, a trait that makes every conversation with her feel like you are the only two people in the world. She listens because she cares, and she questions your responses until she truly feels like she grasps your ideas. Caroline is incredibly driven. She puts her all into everything she does, and because of this, she is very good at whatever she dares to endeavor. Caroline loves being outside and gazing at the moon. Caroline is witty and full of sunshine. And she says the words “milk,” “pillow,” and “naked” with a funny accent because her mother is from Louisiana. I could go on forever, but I’ll save you the (even longer) read.
I may not be able to detail her complete life story, but I can talk about who she is, or at least the way I understand her. Ironically, my understanding of others begins to reveal more about me than it does about the person I am describing. Hence, in order to know these things about Caroline, I had to have noticed them first. Even more, I had to put all these things I have noticed about her in context with each other, so I can see the full picture of who she is.
This self-reflective aspect of friendship is also why there is lots of learning in friendship. When you are friends with someone, you understand that their worldview is different from yours, and seeing their perspective changes yours. More directly, friends teach you that vulnerability requires strength, honesty shows maturity, and most of all, how to love without fear.
Friendships are also unique because they reflect active choices that you make. Unlike family members, friends are people you choose to love, and because of this, these relationships have to be watered, nourished, and maintained. Friendship takes effort, care, and passion because your friends are people who have no obligation to you. They could leave at any moment, so you have to be someone worth staying for. But as demanding as they may sound, friendships are equally, if not infinitely more fulfilling. Friendships give me purpose in life. They are the reason I wake up on days when it feels like the weight of the world is too much to bear. They are the people I run to when I have good news to share.
Someday, you may move miles away from your best friends, get married, have kids, lose contact, and maybe you never speak to them again, but true friends change you, and thus are a part of your heart forever. You take them with you everywhere you go, and in every version of yourself you become. You hear them in your music taste, in the way you laugh with no restraint, and in how you love others without fear. To be loved by someone is to be changed.
It is so cheesy, but I love the song For Good from the Wicked soundtrack because I think it perfectly describes friendship. It is a beautiful song, and it captures the everlasting, yet humble love we call friendship. So since my words cannot do friendship justice, I’ll end with these lyrics instead:
It well may be that we will never meet again in this lifetime,
So let me say before we part
So much of me is made of what I learned from you
You’ll be with me like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end,
I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend.
Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
But because I knew you, I have been changed for good.
Robert Hiraeth 