People have a lot of advice about friends these days. The old adage, “Make new friends and keep the old, one is silver, and the other is gold,” is perfectly sound, but it assumes people don’t evolve or grow apart. You may also have friends of convenience or circumstance, and you might question why they are still your friends. Some might advise you not to spend any time with people who don’t provide value or happiness in return. But of course, it’s not that simple.
We all have people in our lives—people who are important to us, people we spend time with, people we care about.
There are lots of ways we might characterize these relationships—acquaintances, colleagues, teammates—but how many of them are friends?
We tend to use the word friend without a lot of thought. It’s a very common word, and we tend to use it rather loosely, but I think it can be helpful to dig in to what it really means to have a friend. What does friendship mean to you?