Mindless Juices

SO, Angela's post has me thinking about friendships. And I'm going to jump right in. My favorite friendships are the ones with some high shcool buddies. We got a variety of nicknames, but there were five of us. Initially, there were 4, but Brian Mistler joined the mix in seventh grade. We played little league together. We played soccer together. We hung out together. We played video games together. We grew up together. My favorite part about the friendships is that it doesn't matter how much time has passed or what has happened, it's always like nothing's really changed. We've been there for each other through dumping girls, getting girls, dreaming about girls, and getting dumped by girls, life's little let downs, life's great adventures, college(s) and careers... it's all just easy. Maybe all of us weren't there for everything, but one of us was always there for one who needed it. If we haven't talked in literally years, we catch up, but it's not awkward. There's a sort of unwritten rule that we're there for each other. I wish I could say it's like "Four Kings," but it's not. It's simpler than that. We haven't really done life together. We've kept in touch and we keep up on each other's lives through our parents who all still live in Florida. We just grew up together, but that was enough to make some ties that were, in my opinion, everlasting. Now, I love my wife and she truly is the best friend I've ever had. But, her friendship requires work as a necessity of the marriage. It doesn't make it bad. I'm happy to do it. But, it's a very different friendship from the ones I described. There's something truly wonderful about a friendship that requires work. In philosophy, Kant speaks of the morality of one's will. The example often used by my professor was one where you're sick in the hospital and two friends come to visit you. All other things being equal, one WANTS to come visit you and does NOT. I think the friend who did NOT want to visit me and still did is a better friend. That notion of sacrifice says more about his morality than the other friend. There's a lot more to it, but you get the gist. Friendships that ask you to work at them can be more rewarding for that reason. In marriage, there are times you'll do something you're not interested in doing because your spouse wants you to. You'll watch TV shows, you'll spend time when you'd rather be doing something else, you'll do chores you hate, etc., but you get a certain reward you don't get from hanging out with easy friends. No, not the kisses and the hugs, or the gifts or the words of appreciation. There's an internal reward of a feeling of doing something for the sole purpose of trying to make your spouse happy. THEN, the success of actually making your spouse happy has its own rewards. So, that's my little schtick on friendships. I'm not sure there are any other types. You either have the easy ones and they vary in degrees of acquaintances to lifelong friends, but they don't require much effort on your part. And you have ones that you have to work on. They vary in degrees of how much work you have to put in and they vary in degrees of acquaintances to lifelong friends, but they all require some extra effort and offer their own set of rewards.