Decoding the enigma of Friendship✨

The What, Why, When, Where and How of Friendship for you

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.

(L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables)

Friendship is common and yet rare because as R.J. Palacio wrote in her heart-warming story of Auggie Pullman in, ‘Wonder’💛

It’s not enough to be friendly. You have to be a friend.

R. J. Palacio, Wonder.

Friendship is valuable and friendship is a mystery. It can be found anywhere between the pages of a book to the eyes of a complete stranger, to the kindness of a person we’ve known for years or a couple of weeks, to the unique warmth of a parent or a grandparent decades older to us who we thought we knew everything about until they showed us how much more they could be.

This friendship day, I thought to bring home words of the wise to break down friendship (mind you, not break up, never break up) for you. Enjoy!

What is friendship?

Difficult to explain, that’s what. Joking joking.

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime & Punishment)

⭐⭐⭐

She recognized that that is how friendships begin: one person reveals a moment of strangeness, and the other person decides just to listen and not exploit it. (Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Why do we need friendship?

I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that’s why. (John Steinbeck, Of Mice & Men)

⭐⭐⭐

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. (Anais Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Where can we find friendship?

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about. (Rumi)

⭐⭐⭐

Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don’t have to say anything. (Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

When does friendship happen?

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is, at last, a drop which makes it run over; so, in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over. (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451)

⭐⭐⭐

Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .(C.S. Lewis)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

How

How to make a friend

You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes. (A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh)

The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for. (Bob Marley)

⭐⭐⭐

How to make it last

I think if I’ve learned anything about friendship, it’s to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don’t walk away, don’t be distracted, don’t be too busy or tired, don’t take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff. (John Katz)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you for reading till the end!