I have always been socially awkward. With my uncanny ability to be frank, coarse, sarcastic, and condescending all at the same time, I am pretty sure I have warded off people with outstanding breeding and taste, and attracted everyone else left over to be my friends (I'm going to get shot for making this statement). That being said, I suppose I could never trade these friends away, who over the years have shared parallel journeys with me in the matter known as life.
Friendship essentially involves a distinctive kind of concern for your friend, a concern which might reasonably be understood as a kind of love. Philosophers from the ancient Greeks have traditionally distinguished three notions that can properly be called love: agape, eros, and philia. Agape is a kind of love that does not respond to the antecedent value of its object but instead is thought to create value in the beloved; it has come through the Christian tradition to mean the sort of love God has for us persons as well as, by extension, our love for God and our love for humankind in general. By contrast, eros and philia are generally understood to be responsive to the merits of their objects—to the beloved's properties, especially his goodness or beauty. The difference is that eros is a kind of passionate desire for an object, typically sexual in nature, whereas ‘philia’ originally meant a kind of affectionate regard or friendly feeling towards not just one's friends but also possibly towards family members, business partners, and one's country at large (Liddell et al., 1940; Cooper, 1977a). Given this classification of kinds of love, philiaseems to be that which is most clearly relevant to friendship (though just what philia amounts to needs to be clarified in more detail).
I dare not pretend that I fully comprehend the above statement, but in my own simple way, I should say that friendship, like real love as defined in The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck, is sharing a concern for the other and wanting to further the other's growth and success. Given that definition of friendship, I find that, be it through strokes of luck or whims of fate, I have been fortunate enough (despite my tendency to be a shrew) to have struck up good friendships over my years of existence.
There is the feisty girl who used to pinch my arm for fun under the school table, and now the same girl I turn to for spiritual guidance and prayers. There is the quiet girl who invited me to her house for birthday celebrations even if we hardly had anything in common, and now the same girl who gets me through dark and dreary moments with words of wisdom and encouragement. There is the creative girl who used to live a few houses away from me, my total opposite on all things imaginable, and now the same girl I can have annual hours-long conversations with on anything under the sun. There is the patient lady who used to witness my needless fights with a now ex-boyfriend, and now the same lady who ensures that I stay in these battlefields called marriage and motherhood (which are not mutually exclusive at times).
There are, of course, the unlikely friendships. Peers from other schools (like that green one), fellow millenials at work, older colleagues and their families, and some much older folks who treat me like a relative. Sometimes, we got off on the wrong foot. Other times, it was as if we had known each other since birth. Many times, they tell me about their negative impressions of me (which is only to be expected) and how that changed the more time they spent around me (I still think some people fool themselves into liking me). A few times, it would be in the sharing of our stories and struggles over cups of coffee and hearty meals. One time, I dismissed a Facebook friend request from a guy I never knew existed but when we finally met in person, we babbled and laughed the night away like crazy idiots; he would later be pivotal in a self-important chance-to-redeem-myself moment.
In remembering these moments, I offer up a prayer of praise and gratitude to the Big Guy upstairs who sends both friends and foes into our lives so we can grow, learn and love. This is for all the people with friends and for all those who have been true friends. This is for those I love as friends.
Happy Friendship Day!