Ergo friendship sum
Meditations on being together
Friendship is a concept, a dream, an action.
Friendship is in the small moments. Friendship is picking up the phone. Friendship is asking “how are you?” and really listening to the answer.
Friendship is remembering (or forgetting). Friendship is remembering the good times and forgiving the bad. Friendship is picking you up from the airport. Friendship is pretending their worst boyfriend never existed.
Friendship changes, transmutes. In your early twenties, it is dancing, singing, crying together. In your thirties, it is the live, laugh, love of watching friends get married, have children, formulate opinions on kitchen islands. In your forties, friendship is about holding on as the world squeezes around you—kids on one side, elderly parents on the other. Friendship in your fifties is realizing you’ve known each other for twenty-five years.
My mother and her best friend bicker like a married couple. They are seventy and their friendship is nearly as old. Two women, meeting as children, and holding on forever. They’ve been together longer than she’s been with my father, longer than she’s known me. Friendship is forming attachments and keeping them, even through all the changes.
Friendship holds you together in difficult moments. As the world spins out of control, you can cling to the hands of your friends. They know you. You know them. As Jane Fonda has said, “I have my friends and therefore I am.” Move over Rene Descartes. That’s the philosophy I’ll live by.
You are my friend and, therefore, I exist. I track myself through my friendships. I find myself through them. In friendship, you discover new parts of yourself. You can unfold, unfurl into something new and wonderful. My friends saw me become someone new, someone better than the person they met.
Friendship is a through line, a way to track our lives and give them shape and meaning. It was 26. It was the year we went on that road trip. Twenty-six is the year we went to Iowa and slept in twin beds in a bed-and-breakfast and pretended we were Nancy Meyers characters. It is the year I began to find myself again, and you were there alongside me.
Our friendship weaves throughout my life, through me and, without it, I am not sure who I am. Our friendship holds me together. Our friendship reminds me of myself.
Friendship is the dream I had as a child. It is the dream of finding someone to look into and having them look back. Friendship is the dream and we made it real together. — Katie
Recommended Readings:
Staff Picks
Each week, our team will bring you recommendations that are relevant to the themes of friendship, relationships and connection. This week, we hear from our copywriter, Katie!
If you didn’t get enough of Cillian Murphy as a physicist in Oppenheimer, check out the 2007 sci-fi thriller Sunshine. The incredibly tense film kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. It grips you immediately and doesn’t let you go. One thing I love about movies is their ability to entirely capture my focus. No matter what is going on in my real life for the 107-minute run time this space mission is the only thing that exists for me. Sunshine is a great movie for when you want to go on a terrifying journey through space.
Gastronativism by Fabio Parasecoli
I’m midway through this incredibly readable academic book by scholar Fabio Parasecoli. I started reading it because I’ve been thinking a lot about food in my own community. I live in Los Angeles, and we have a huge breadth of food options available. I want to use food to connect more with my neighbors and Gastronativism puts to words so many feelings I have about the use of food in our daily lives. Food can be used to connect or to exclude others. This book is a great primer on that concept.
This Week’s Prompt:
Who is good at practicing patience?