The Value of Friendship

“In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.” – Henry David Thoreau


I think what Mr. Thoreau was writing about here is pretty relevant. There are two messages that immediately struck me: (1) life is not a popularity contest and (2) you cannot solve all your problems by looking externally.

(1) Having a lot of friends can be a wonderful thing, but it should not be a social goal in itself. Quantity should never make up for quality. It is essential that we are able to connect with people at a deeper level. We need to disclose our passions, thoughts, hopes, and fears. Without the outlet of a close friend (or other loved one), we are simply left to dwell on our anxious thoughts, or celebrate accomplishments with ourselves.

Think about your closest friends for a minute. The odds are that they know a good deal about your history, motivations, pre-occupations, and philosophies. Now imagine you just accomplished a longstanding goal. Maybe you just got the phone call indicating you successfully landed your dream job. What is the first thing you do? Do you find a random person on the street and tell them the great news? Do you make sure you call Jill, Bob, Steve, Sue, and John, etc. who are always part of the happy hour crew, but you don’t know at any significant level? If you are as lucky enough to have parents like mine, you call Mom and Dad. But, likely the very next thing you do is call your best friend. Because that friend probably knows everything that built up to this moment, they have taken the journey with you. They can truly share in your joy, because they are right there with you the whole way. They understand the foundation of the pyramid, so they can really appreciate the pinnacle. Now imagine that you can hear the smile in their voice. It probably broadens your smile that much more.

These are the kind of relationships that I value and strive for. I would rather have just one relationship at this level than two hundred-fifty “surface friends.” Sure, such a large number can boost the ego, and bandage up any self-confidence issues, but it will not satisfy the deeper need. This is not to say that you can’t have dozens of excellent, close friendships, but at some point time restraints set in, and quality suffers.


(2) If we are having inner struggles, whether they are physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, reaching out to friends can only take us so far. They do know what makes us tick and can provide an objective opinion, but if the problem is internal, we should probably look inside ourselves and duke it out a little bit. Maybe we can write in a journal, play music, exercise, pray, meditate, whatever gets us to a focused state of mind.

With everything that draws our attention, from school, traffic, work, instant messaging, and our iPod, it is easy to find a cluttered mess in hour heads at the end of the day. If we find the right activity or medium through which to clean that mess, we can put things back in order. It is only at this point that we can hope to solve or cope with the inner struggles. It could be the mess itself was causing the problem. In such a circumstance, that Yoga session will have you back dancing away with your iPod while messaging on Myspace in no time!