Weike Wang shared a beautiful essay on friendship in The New Yorker magazine. It takes about 10 minutes to read – it is worth reading in full.
I found myself smiling and nodding as I read it. She starts by sharing her experience as a teacher talking to her students about their friends. Kids, especially in their pre-teens and teens, are all about friends and friendship. They can’t imagine a world otherwise.
She, on the other hand, has only been experiencing attrition. As she’s grown up, she shares how marriage, kids, and work reduce the number of friends – true friends – she really has.
She then goes on to reflect about the gift and curse of friendship – choice.
“The wonder, and the curse, of friendship is choice. You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends. For me, common qualities and habits help. Female. About my age. Sense of humor. I would not choose a friend who went out dancing all night on Ecstasy. No offense to dancing or Ecstasy, but in comparison with those things I would be a total bore. I would not choose a friend who had a second home somewhere like the Hamptons or Lake Como or Austria. Of course, it is superficially nice to be invited to garden parties or SoHo lofts, but I don’t want to be the lone Asian woman in that garden wearing a cotton dress and sensible shoes, my only topics of conversation being work, the grind, and not that new art gallery down the street. In other words, the supposed freedom of friend selection goes only so far, and, given how deeply my choices are informed by my background, family, and upbringing, I wonder if they are choices at all.“
It is beautifully expressed – especially “I wonder if they are choices at all.”
She then goes on to describe the truth behind friendships – friends grow apart… and growing together is not the norm.
“All this to say that friends grow apart. Commonalities change. Common habits diverge. Qualities that you didn’t much like in a friend amplify, and your own traits, priorities, shift. A friendship is not stagnant, and growing together is usually not the norm. It’s nice to have writer friends, but then all you talk about is writing and how insane you have to be to do it. Nice to have friends with other jobs, but then all you hear about is their work, which you might not understand or care about. Work colleagues can never be true friends, and neither can one’s students. A fake friend is easy to spot, and even easier is the friend or acquaintance who, after a long period of no contact, emerges from literally nowhere with the message Hey! Just saw you published a book! Here’s a picture of that book in a bookstore. Let’s grab coffee and catch up.”
And she ends her essay by making peace with that beautifully temporary nature of friendship.
“From the lobby, I entered the elevator with my dog. A pair of summer students came in, too, with their suitcases and totes, and my dog and I were pushed into a corner. I was annoyed that summer students were already moving in, less than two weeks after the regular ones had left. I imagined more weed, more parties, full washers and dryers, rank trash drips in the hallways for workers to clean up. Then the two students started talking about their afternoon plans. Today, they were going to go to Central Park, sit on a blanket, make friendship bracelets, and braid each other’s hair. They were earnest. I heard no sarcasm. An interloper to this casual, wholesome moment, I was reminded that, though most friendships are temporary, they are very beautiful in bloom. The friends left the elevator laughing, tote bag to tote bag. All my annoyance went away.“
As I started writing this blog in my teens, I’ve thought about friendship a lot over the years and written about it plenty over the years. I’ve experienced the phase where friends are everything and then also experienced the attrition she talks about.
The one idea that has stayed with me over the years (decades?) is that friendships last for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. As they’re a two way street – even with your best intentions, you can’t make a seasonal friendship last a lifetime.
It is a painful lesson to learn. But it doesn’t change how true it is.
But, to Weike’s point, though most friendships are temporary, they are very beautiful in bloom.
Enjoy that, we must.
