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Josh Knox

Just Joshin' #128 (Friendship)

Published 14 days ago • 6 min read

1 Family Photo:
Friendship

I don't think I'm particularly good at friendship.

I never know the right gifts to buy people. I often don't know the right things to say. I can be bad at following up.

In the newsletter a couple weeks ago, I wrote: "My personal theory of friendship is that we do small favors for each other, small favors escalate to big favors, and eventually we lose the score and just count each other as friends."

A friend of the newsletter replied with a collection of his favorite essays on friendship.

Thank you, friend. I owe you one.

--

Another theory of friendship is that friends are the people with whom you share a location, time, and interests. Sharing all three is essential. Remove any leg of this tripod, and friendships erode into acquaintanceships.

This theory explains why everyone who meets in college form instant friendships: college students are packed into dorms with abundant time and interests. It also explains why these friendships fade: after college, everyone goes their separate ways.

I don't fully subscribe to the tripod theory of friendship. The time we can give friends changes with our seasons of life. I think dormant friendships can be reignited with the ebbs and flows of those seasons. I also think today's technologies can combat the barriers of distant locations.

But proximity has a lot going for it.

One reason we live where we live (and are not committed to any long-term trips in the foreseeable future) is so Calvin and Lawrence can develop deep friendships.

Our house is in a row of 5 that all have multiple kids in elementary school. The house across the street has kids too. This is rare for a neighborhood that's been mostly populated by retirees for the last decade.

After school, the kids play in little swarms of activity. It's fun to watch from afar.

--

When I was in college, I was surprised to meet new friends who had big groups of friends from their hometowns. People they'd known their whole lives and played with together every day since they were in diapers. It seemed like something from the movies.

That wasn't my experience. I don't have any lasting friendships from elementary school, though I still keep in touch with a few friends I made in 8th grade. It's probably the natural result of switching schools a few times, as well as growing up in a small town where everyone goes somewhere else after they graduate. It's probably the natural result of going somewhere else after I graduated.

--

I don't know if Calvin and Lawrence are making lifelong friendships here. I hope so—they seem like a good thing.

Time will tell.

1 Dad Joke:
Golf Friendships

video preview​

I don't golf, but I can see the appeal of spending a day walking around with your friends.

Highlights:
Friendship Theories

​One Part of Your Life You Shouldn’t Optimize by Brad Stulberg​

Pandemic-era socializing can be incredibly efficient. But maybe — hear me out — efficiency shouldn’t be the main goal when it comes to friendship? Intimate relationships take time to build and their benefits are not measurable, at least not in immediate and quantifiable ways.

​Seneca on True and False Friendship by Maria Popova​

Eighteen centuries before Emerson wrote in his meditation on the two pillars of friendship that “a friend is a person with whom [one] may be sincere,” Seneca considers the uses and misuses of the term in a magnificent letter titled On True and False Friendship:
​
"If you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means… When friendship is settled, you must trust; before friendship is formed, you must pass judgment. Those persons indeed put last first and confound their duties, who … judge a man after they have made him their friend, instead of making him their friend after they have judged him. Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with him as with yourself… Regard him as loyal and you will make him loyal."
​
In another letter, Seneca...turns the beam of his wisdom toward the only valid and noble reason for forming a friendship:
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"For what purpose, then, do I make a man my friend? In order to have someone for whom I may die, whom I may follow into exile, against whose death I may stake my own life, and pay the pledge, too."

​What Is A Friend? by Tyler Hogge​

“The number and quality of friendships you have has a bigger effect on your health than any of the factors your doctor usually worries about: your weight, how much exercise you take, what you eat, what pills you are prescribed, or the quality of air”​
...
I think friendship has 10 increasing levels of strength, and the best friends – true friends – live near the top of this pyramid, around 8-10.
​
A friend:
1. Is kind to you to your face (when you are in the room)
2. Is kind to you behind your back (when you are not in the room)
3. Will genuinely celebrate when good things happen to you
4. Will genuinely console when bad things happen to you
5. Can be trusted with vulnerable or confidential information
6. Will do things to try and make you happy
7. Shows up – volunteers to help when needed
8. Will fight for you
9. Will push you to your potential, often by telling you hard truths
10. Will die for you
​
As the scale increases, the acts of friendship go from simply talking to doing and sacrificing.

​Friendship by David Whyte​

FRIENDSHIP is a mirror to presence and a testament to forgiveness. Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses, as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn. A friend knows our difficulties and shadows, and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them. An undercurrent of real friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy. All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die.
​
In the course of the years, a close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves; to remain friends we must know the other and their difficulties, and even their sins, and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, the leading creative edge of their incarnation, thus subtly discouraging what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves.
...
​
But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend of sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

​the friendship theory of everything by Ava​

what I’m trying to say is that in San Francisco I’ve made close friends who have had very unusual lives where they’ve sought a lot of autonomy and the way they see their relationships, their lives, and the world has helped me become open to pursuing something unorthodox, too. People choose places; places shape people; people go on to shape other people. We should be thoughtful about the kind of transformation we opt into.
​
It’s impossible to overstate how much the people we’re close with affect us.
​
Some tenets of the friendship theory of everything:
1. You accept that in choosing who you spend time with you choose who you are.
...
4. You ask your friends to live close to you, though you accept that they might not want to. You say, Let’s all stay in California together. I want my kids to grow up with your kids.
...
7. People will have periods when they disappear; people have times when they let you down. When you know someone for many many years you will have so many ups and downs. As with any kind of love, the most important thing is that you both keep coming back.
...
10. Your friends will change you, even in ways you initially reject. That’s a good thing. You will acquire new opinions and hobbies; you will find yourself into uncomfortable situations; you will learn to like the people they like.

iamJoshKnox Highlight:

I published my essay on running the point Mariah Trail Marathon today.

​4 Running Lies I Was Told in PE | iamJoshKnox​

Many thanks to my sister Magae for gathering our family to share our time, interest, and location together this summer.
​

Want to Chat?

Grab some time on my calendar and share a story this week:

​Let's Chat!​

Book some time even if you don't know what you want to talk about:
​https://calendly.com/iamjoshknox​

Until next week,
​iamJoshKnox​​

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Josh Knox

Hi! I am Josh Knox. Read more of me here: 👇

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