Let’s talk about friendship

The October 2009 company newsletter – the newsletter’s second issue, following the inaugural September 2009 issue – will have a theme of “Friendship”. The Editorial Board has invited staff to contribute an article of not more than 300 words on the topic. I have two reasons for not submitting to the newsletter. First, I’d rather write to a wider audience anyway. And second, the deadline’s passed. Hehe.

It’s a good topic for the internal company newsletter, especially since the majority of the staff is in Dubai, separated from family. Friendships, especially workplace friendships, take on a whole new significance for them.

“You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends.” Our friends, then, are a reflection of us. After all, if you choose your friends, then your selection must say something about your priorities and personality. Why would you choose a friend who is incompatible or only serves to introduce aggravation and grief into your life? And yet, we need variety. How would we discover anything if all viewpoints we encounter reflect only our own thoughts? Good thing then that we don’t have complete control over our friends.

There are many flavours of friends we collect in our lives. There are those long-term kindergarten friends, the ones we grew up with in the neighbourhood, and have maintained a relationship over the ages. It’s possible this friendship has morphed over the years, but some bonds really do last. The same can be said of all the school friends we make, from grade school to middle school, and onto high school. These are the people we spent the majority of our time with during our formative years, in a feedback loop as we formed our unique personalities. A select few will graduate with us to adult life, but most will fall by the wayside as lives separate, geographically, spiritually, philosophically, politically.

Friendship in adult life gets more complicated, and usually more fulfilling. Your university friends are the ones most likely to last your lifetime. These are the friends who slaved over assignments and reports with you, who participated in clubs and associations with you, who ranted against professors with you, who partied with you, who cheered at sporting events with you. For most people university was the first period away from home, so it was a big deal. You had to be independent, and were going through that experience with others who were also in the same boat. Some people were insular during this period, only making friends from those in the same course as them. Others threw the net wider, and made friends studying other disciplines. But your classmates from freshman year are most likely to be your closest friends.

And then there are the friend “also-rans”. There are the acquaintances at work, some of whom genuinely became friends and stuck around in your life even if you moved jobs. There are the friends you made online, some of whom you even meet IRL. This last group is probably the only group of friends you actively sought out, and not people who evolved into friends through circumstance. However, most of them would remain as acquaintances, or fellow hobbyists.

The other friends we have to ask ourselves about, to be certain they are friends, are the ones we meet through circumstance. These are from all those other groups; the friends from school, from work, and so on. Brought together by our situations, we sometimes find out that we’re only friends as far as we remain in that condition. Move schools, swap courses, move to another country, change jobs, and we may find that we no longer connect with our old friends.

“Friends come and go, but true friends always stay.”

True friends are those who stick with you, even after circumstances change. Don’t belittle “only friends” though; they’re valuable because they lend you a social life, and they introduce that needed variety into your life. Your circle of true friends is probably smaller though. The Internet and social networking doesn’t change this dynamic. Keeping in touch with your friends does not equate to connecting with them.

People change. People grow. Your true friends will grow with you, and accept you as you change. Treasure these people.