Something I don’t think we talk about enough is the funny thing we call friendship. What really is it? What makes a friend? The ambiguity surrounding it is interesting to me, as not only does friendship define our time at university, but it is also and will always be, one of the definitive factors in our life: who we choose to spend and share our life with. It is, I would argue, one of the most beautiful parts of the human experience, so why don’t we talk about it more? Where are the stories and epics about the love stories around the beauty that is platonic love. I will be drawing on the touching piece by C. S. Lewis, ‘Friendship—the Least Necessary Love’—to understand this, as he considered friendship “one of the highest achievements of the individual.” Lewis initially remarks that, “to the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves” whereas the modern world ignores it. Perhaps this is because of the nature of friends, they way they inhabit our lives, they are a quiet constant that witness your life by your side in a way that other members of your life do not; all your weird phases, the rises and falls of relationships, your biggest milestones, they are there for it all, and still stick with you and you stick with them, voluntarily. The mutuality of the love and care for each other in friendships I consider unlike that in any other forms of relationship. There is a beautiful pureness in simply wanting to be around someone and share moments of your life with them. While true friends may be rare and hard to come across, once you do find them, it is like acquiring another piece of yourself, one which you learn from and grow alongside.
The presence of friendship, which is fundamental to human life, is a curious thing in itself. One can question why, in fact, it is so intrinsic, when, from an evolutionary or even biological perspective, it represents very little advantage in the sense of survival. Lewis labelled friendship as “the least natural of loves”, in the sense that it is not instinctive or biological and our species, really, has no need of it—not in a negative sense, if anything, there is something all the more touching in this ‘mere companionship’. For me, it represents something almost magical about what it is to be human, as something that exceeds such biological ‘necessity’ and points to something more. This echoes, somewhat, a philosophical argument about beauty, and our ability to appreciate beauty, as undermining the pure evolutionary basis for our existence as it currently stands. Our appreciation and awe of art, music and so on are not something we can chalk up to evolution—it offers nothing in this sense—nonetheless, it is fundamental to what it is to live a full human existence. Even Darwin recognised this as a potential threat to his evolutionary theory as the ultimate explanation. Such things are considered as potential windows to the divine, to something higher, which characterises human existence.
Friendship, I believe, similarly points to something more than brute and harsh fact about our existence as beings. It is unnecessary, as Lewis argued, like philosophy, like art, “it has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” Rather than resulting out of an urge to reproduce or survive, it occurs out of connection with those with whom we share interests, where the initial conversation may be ‘No way! You like that too?’. From there, something quite magical will unfold. The birth of friendship, discovering a new kindred spirit, who awards you with a sense of belonging in, what can be, quite a harsh world, is perhaps one of the most wonderful parts of life. You take each other as you are, with little care for whether one is married or single, what their parents did—this will all come later. You come to each other as detached from your context, simply as the person you are at this moment. As Lewis so beautifully put, “it is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. [Romance] will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.”These are the moments you will remember and cherish. You found each other, by the beauty of coincidence and some initial vulnerability, and from this you may have someone who will see you through the rest of your life. It is this feeling that you are not in it alone, but you also will not leave them in it alone—their strife is yours also. It comes not out of duty, but a genuine love, perhaps more real and true than any romance.
So, try to remember the beautiful coincidence that has led to this chosen family, one you can call your own. Friendship holds so much value that I think we are, as a society, guilty of neglecting. We have all created our own place in the world, through these connections, and no one can take that away from you. Look after your friends, it may be the greatest thing you ever do.