friendship is unnecessary

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” - C.S. Lewis in the Four Loves

There are friendships that become so intertwined with your life that they become a defining feature of it. It’s not that losing this particular friend would make life less interesting; losing this particular friend would mean losing a part of life itself.

Relationships — the quality, worthwhile sort — require work at the beginning, but the end result of that work is something very meaningful. You may spend an entire calendar year “getting to know someone”, but that one year has the potential to yield a lifelong friend. Is there any investment more worthy of your time?

Do I have enough friends? It’s an honest question, rooted in curiosity and not selfishness. I have a wide swath of acquaintances, but I can count on one hand the people who I can call during an emergency. For a long time I thought that meant I didn’t have very many friends, like, if you can’t call them in an emergency are they even friends worth having? But then there’s this notion of “tiers” and it has helped me quantify things differently.

You see, I have friends who I go to movies with, friends I grab coffee with, friends I road trip with, and friends who I feel comfortable crying in front of. Maybe some people are able to integrate these relationships better than myself, but it’s helpful to think of friendships existing on tiers, at least for me.

This entire post originated from a text I sent my best friend one day. It ended with, "At this point, it would be more work to not be friends." I was intrigued by this concept that over time, friendships could become strong enough to sustain themselves, almost as if the friendship was an entity in and of itself. I wanted to write this all down to reflect on at a later time. the end.