´Friendship is unnecessary – like philosophy, like art – it has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which gives value to survival’
- C.S LEWIS
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We are starting this blog post with that quote in mind.
The first time I saw that quote – I was a little surprised, ready to put up a fight.
Who would say friendship is unnecessary?
But then I saw that it meant unnecessary for survival. And then well, I began to understand what it meant when I read the full quote. Friendship isn’t food, shelter or clothing.
It isn’t water or oxygen. We do not need it to exist, to keep body and soul together.
But I believe it is something that not having it would make the whole dance of wanting to stay alive, of being alive just tedious. Meaningless, and not a lot of fun.
Imagine a world where we do not have a shoulder to lean on, a listening ear for our concerns, a fellow admirer of the things that we love and that bring us joy. It would be a dank, lonely world.
I don’t think the loneliness of not being understood, of not having a companion is worth enduring, and because of this, I am grateful that friends exist. That the companionship of friendship exists. Not only because of what it helps us to avoid. But because of what it helps us to create.
WHO DOES IT HELP?
Me and you, and all of us.
In an earlier piece this year on the blog, I wrote about how Art, specifically music, got me through one of the quietest and loneliest years in my life. Art is great, it offers its own kind of companionship that should definitely not be taken for granted, but nothing beats just having a friend.
Having someone to talk to.
I think about another quote too. To paraphrase it; making a friend is like meeting another person. where you have a conversation and come to the realization that you share something profound and unique in common. Where you are made to joyfully ask that question; “What? You too?”
The joy of meeting someone who stretches out a friendly arm to us in the chaos and happenstance of the world – that is something that gives life a certain quality, like it is worth living for., and not just a question of survival. Here we are, alive on another day to be spent looking at the world, exploring it in mutual adoration with another person.
Do you understand what I mean? The intimacy that friendship creates is so complex; it comes in so many shapes and sizes.
You could have the regular, unobtrusive acquaintance, and you could have someone who feels a little like an extension of yourself. Someone who feels vital to the texture of your world.
People say a lot about romantic love, which admitably is valid, but what about the simplicity of friendship. What about what friendships afford us – room to be ourselves.
Like C.S Lewis wrote; Eros (romantic love) would have naked bodies, but with friendship, we have naked personalities. Nothing in pretence, nothing done to bolster up our image in front of the other. There is no real catch to it; we can be imperfect, and do not worry about being imperfect, because one looks at the other with the eyes of a love that does not need to be augmented to be real.
I have been lucky to meet, and to have friends like this. What that has created, I must admit, is a very high standard for who I will consider to be a friend. But I do this in the understanding of what friendship has to offer – I do not want half of the real thing, or to give the other person half of the real thing, I want to work to build a solid edifice we can both come to, and feel unalone. And feel like we belong to something more than ourselves.
I am only human after all, in that I want these things. That I see things this way, so let me be human.
WHAT DOES FRIENDSHIP COST US?
Does love always cost something? A sacrifice. A compromise, a trade off with something we consider to be integral to who we are?
I haven’t always been lucky with friendship – like I said, I went through a pretty lonely year once. And in that time, I was forced to ask myself this question – does love have to cost something? And do we need to compromise, always, in order to be loved?
I don’t mean the regular compromise we all have to do – choosing to be unselfish, putting the other’s needs above ours, being considerate of the other’s feelings even when we are hurting too. I mean a compromise in the most basic facets of who we are.
For a while, I did not have a lot of people that I could relate to. And this was in my late teens – during that time, I was pretty interested in coming into my own as an artist, figuring out how I think, figuring out what Art meant to me and to my life. Despite how rough that time was, I know now that I likely would not have been the quality of writer that I am now, if I did not take a step out of the mould. If I did not decide to just try, just try and look at the world through my own eyes.
I made the choice to be true to myself, but through all this, I constantly wondered if it was worth it. My interests meant that there weren’t a lot of people I could discuss what I was thinking about with.
All of my usual friends were so far away, and everyone that I knew was interested in more mainstream forms of art. No one really wanted to discuss James Baldwin essays with me. Ha—ha.
I developed a lot of self-doubt about the validity of my art, of trying to be the specific type of artist I wanted to be. I wasn’t sure anyone would be able to relate.
I wondered, often, if it would just be easier to compromise on this interest. Tone my passion for it down a bit. But would I have felt any less lonely? Trying to belong in a room full of people that I know in the deepest part of myself that I do not belong in. in a room full of people who would not give me the chance to be who I was in order to belong.
So, while I often asked myself if I should compromise, I asked myself with even more firmness if the compromise would even be worth it.
I had very strong doubts that it would be.
THE CONFLICTS WITHIN.
But those are the conflicts of being outside of friendship. Wanting to go in.
What about the conflicts of being within a friendship?
It is inevitable, friends will fight. But what matters more is that they learn how to grow around it.
Some people never do, though.
In my current (re)read, I happened upon the very close bond between two characters in Arundhati Roy’s masterpiece The god of small things. The bond is between the twins; Estha and Rahel (a boy and girl set of twins, don’t let the names deceive you).
And I know the bond between siblings is outside the realm of actual friendship, but is it completely? Aren’t all of the deepest loves friendships at their core – family, marriage and siblinghood?
Everything else is built at the very least, on the bedrock of just being friends.
Anyways, Estha and Rahel shared a very deep bond in childhood. But the book opens very clearly with the slow-burn and fragmented reality of a love that was lost in that family – especially between the siblings. I think that in many ways, the story has the subtext of this relationship that was broken by a very traumatic experience. And it just died, the weak embers of that love are a far cry from the HUGE fire between them.
I mean, these twins (in the story) were practically able to read the thoughts in the others’ mind. They are a boy and girl set of twins, but they are also a one-soul set of twins. (It is not cringey, it is in the story Ha-ha).
Many people have experienced this loss – having someone who was so close to you that they could understand what you had to say, even before you said it. Then something happens, and the fire of that friendship just… goes?
What do we do then?
I don’t know. Maybe forgive? Try again. I truly do not know. I wish I did.
What I do know is that friendship is important. It is vital to our shared humanity. And I would not want to live in a world without it. I also, would not want to live in a world that did not create art that just looked at plain, every-day friendship as something to be marvelled at. At something to create art about.
There is a book by Nobel Laureate, Toni Morrison, it is titled Sula. The novel explores the friendship between two women. One of whom has to make a very important choice about what is important to her as regards the friendship with the other woman.
In an interview, Morrison was asked if the story had a homoerotic subtext. And she answered; “you think that if I wanted to write that sort of thing, you think I wouldn’t have?”
Friendship is art in its own way. The love it creates in our lives, the things it allows us to share in communion with another human being, I find it to be irreplaceable. Essential for a full, meaningful life, even it is not something we really need for survival!