About Friendship

A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body.  – Unknown

Loneliness is a most unpleasant sensation. Right up there with being wrong in a dispute with your little sister (as it turned out, I did put the red shirt in with the whites) or watching a full episode of something on the Disney channel. But the way to defeat loneliness is to have friends.

Be that real or imaginary. I tend to favor the latter.

Now, you don’t need to have lots of friends to be happy; in fact, I might even venture to say that if you have too many friends, you don’t really have a friend at all. Real friendship is about the quality not the quantity, not the amount of ice cream but the flavor. Particularly jamocha almond fudge.

Recently, I had a friend that I met in Thailand who’s from Colorado, come into town for his sister’s graduation. And he contacted me and we met up.

It was one of the best nights of the summer.

We got to catch up, retell sordid stories from our time in Thailand (that could be a blog unto itself—though one I would have to publish anonymously), drink a couple beers, and just reflect in the presence of one another. And the best part: he was doing well, succeeding in life while following his dreams.

On my way home from seeing him on his last night in town, I even got a little depressed. I forgot how much fun I had with him, why he made my Thailand experience the awesomeness that it was. And that of course got me missing all my friends.

The ones still in Santa Clara, the ones following their rap careers, the ones living in Portland that I have just been too dumb to contact. And I regret that. I have just been so caught up in writing, studying for the GRE, lounging about my house, that I haven’t made the effort that I certainly should have.

Sometimes we get so entrenched in our own lives we forget what makes our lives worth living. Humans are social creatures, it is in our DNA: evolutionary psychologists theorize that because we relied upon social groups in primitive times to survive, we have a negative biological reaction to ostracism and loneliness today.

So go out there, contact a friend you haven’t talked to in a while, and if nothing else, just check in to see how they’re doing. Because even if you haven’t spoken in a while, I’m certain he or she is thinking of you.

Friendly (which is actually one of very few words that ends in “ly” but isn’t an adverb and thus doesn’t really work here),

jdt