Life Together

Yes, it's time for another of those appropriately timed posts where life shapes what I'm saying. That seems to happen quite a bit.

I just finished (basically) packing up my room; finals ended today, and with them my freshman year of college. Seeing as I have a number of senior friends, and that I won't see most of my friends period over the summer, I thought I would reflect on the nature of friendship, and how it is affected by communal living.

Going back to Aristotle, who is a darn cool cat: he posits that true friendship involves living together, and asserts that one should have only as many close friends as may live together in close proximity. Leaving home this year has forced me to think about my friendships in light of seperation, and while I am not as despairing as The Philosopher, I see his point. Whenever I reunite with a friend I haven't seen for some time, there is a period of awkwardness which inevitably occurs as we get our bearing on our friendship again. Is this because we did not have true friendship? No, but our lack of sharing life together has caused us to lose some of what made our friendship what it was.

This aspect of living together has a bigger impact that we usually think. Our lives are formed in the day to day, not big events, and trust is built little by little. When you are around someone consistently, you build up relationship momentum that is not present when you are apart. Regaining that momentum is never instantaneous. Of course, the time it takes to get it back varies; with my closest friends the ice is normally broken very quickly.

But this raises another thought in my mind: what is it that our new relationship consists of? We can never fully have the old friendship back-- we have both changed too much for that. Do we sit around and reminisce about things past? Try to regain some of the old magic by engaging in new activities? Or do we blaze trails, hoping that the new direction is as enjoyable as the last?

The first and second options usually leave me sad. I cannot return to my high school days, through memory or imitation. I am a different person, and the old me has little resemblance to who I am now. No, I must move forward or risk being a dead shark. Hopefully my friendship survives this metamorphosis.

Back to the original point: how possible is it to maintain friendship when seperated by distance? My mother had some experience with this, having spent every year between 8th grade and the second year of college in a different school, in 6 countries on 3 continents. During that time she made friends who, at the end of her life, came to visit and rekindled past closeness. Much had changed in the intervening time, of course, but the spark of friendship remained.

Letters help, of course, which is why I am such a big fan, at least in theory (my practice often falls terribly short). But how can you capture someone's essence on paper? Very few people come across as themselves through the written word. I honestly don't have an answer to this problem. Yet I do not despair and lock myself away, refusing to engage people because I will only have to say goodbye. Knowing them, even for a short time, changes my life. As my best friend and I said as I left tearfully for college, "It doesn't seem fair that God has only given us four years together. But I'm sure glad He did." The tears are part of the gladness, and with my Christian friends at least I have the hope of reunion someday in a place where tears will not be necessary to let us know true joy.