Defining friendship — From Father, To Kid

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything”

Muhammad Ali

Making friends has always been hard for me. When I was in school, and by school I mean the entirety of my life before graduating from college, my personal life was all about “fitting in,” “being social,” and “being normal.” I think everyone goes through this phase to some degree, but each person to a different extent. One of the reasons for this is because everyone is at different points along society's "normal" spectrum and as a result, certain people can more easily fall into the idealistic norm.

For me, I always felt I was on the fringe of that spectrum. I didn't feel like I "fit in," or at least not like people I knew. I always felt like I was on the second or third circle of friends, but rarely in the first. Now, it wasn't like I had no friends, I did. I even had close friends and best friends, but I didn't feel like I had a circle. This "non-circle" feeling was a constant growing up but it didn't become a problem until middle school. Why middle school? I don't know, but I distinctly remember middle school being a huge pivot on how I felt about myself and being on the outside of the circle.

At the time, I wasn't happy with it, but I didn't know what to do to change the circumstance. I felt like people had already chosen their circles or "picked their places" so to speak, so what on earth could I do to change that? I envied people who changed schools because it felt like that had a built-in entry point to disrupt existing circles and find a place. In fact, my junior year of high school, I even changed schools partially due to me wanting to force that kind of opportunity.

Well, as you might have expected, that didn't work. But something pretty incredible happened coming out of that change. You see, prior to that moment, my friends were based on proximity. Meaning, my childhood friends were completely dependent on the fact that they lived in my neighborhood, were in my classes or shared my extracurricular activities. But after that moment, it all changed because proximity was taken out of the situation. What I was left with was a crystal ball that showed me exactly who was willing to go out of their way to be in my life and just as important, who I was willing to go out of my way to be part of theirs.

Those two final years in high school were pretty rough as my plan pretty much backfired when I never really made any great friends at the new school (I told you I was bad at making friends). But, that change helped me realize two important things about myself:

I do better outside of circles. Maybe that is why I never felt like I was in the inner circle, but it took a long time for me to understand that it was perfectly fine that that was the case.
My true friends have the ability to transcend proximity and have the ability to be there for me even when they aren't actually here. Realizing this was important for me because it became a large part of how I define my best friendships.

I know what you are thinking, "don't you usually have a point to these stories?" Well here it is: until very recently, I credited my high school move with understanding those things about me, but that isn't true. If you really pushed me, I could have accurately told you the friends that would stay in my life and I could have told you that circles just weren't my thing.

You don't need to make a move, you just need to do some soul searching. People define friendships differently and my definition most likely won't be the same as yours. People have different needs and friendships play different roles in their lives. So before you make an unnecessary move, my advice to you is to take the time to understand yourself and what you need out of those roles. There will be aspects of that definition that will change throughout the years and there will also be constants, but know that it is okay if your definition of friendship doesn't line up with everyone else's.