Mindset
Friendship Means Everything
“Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.”
– Virginia Woolf
This past weekend, I attended a professional conference that brought together people with whom I don’t spend large amounts of time, but who have become good friends.
It made me reflect on how friendship expresses itself, what it truly means, and how it evolves and reinvents itself, especially these days.
When I grew up, friendship was forged in the fire of shared experiences—both the good and the bad—through middle school and high school. It was sports played, games won and lost, epic parties, and simple moments of boredom, often filled with stupidity and laughter.
Time and tension were the forges that shaped those bonds. Some of them, even decades later, feel exactly the same. I have friends from high school that I see every few years, and each time we reconnect, it’s as though no time has passed.
Every so often, I open my phone to 100+ back-and-forth messages from this gang of elders, debating the latest sports event or laughing about some crazy thing someone got up to.
After high school, university became the next fertile ground for friendship. Like most people, some lifelong relationships were formed during those years. It was different, though—not quite the everyday immersion of high school. Friendships formed around class schedules, projects, sports, and parties. If you lived in residence or shared a house, you might have recreated that high school fraternal vibe.
When these foundational life stages ended, work became the primary opportunity to build friendships, along with the pastimes you explored outside of work. But now, the time you spend with people is filled with purpose and agenda. It’s often compressed and challenging. The experiences you share in these spaces are different, but they can still yield incredible friendships and profound growth.
That said, life’s responsibilities and constructs slowly shrink the time we have to simply be together. Long, aimless periods are replaced by short, intentional moments where life is experienced in snapshots.
Caring for someone else feels more precarious, less tangible, and often fleeting. But through recurrence and intentionality, you begin to build trust. You know they know. You know they want to know.
And then, if you have children, friendships often blossom from your kids’ friendships with other parents. These relationships can feel a little less stable, because they’re rooted in your children’s connections. Still, the shared experience of parenting—the challenges, the wins, the mutual support—becomes a powerful glue. There’s a unique comfort in knowing someone else has your kid’s back, just as you have theirs. It’s a vital part of the community you build.
Over time, you realize that friendship thrives in these brief, intense moments of presence, not necessarily in permanence.
You also realize you have a responsibility: to reach out, to circle back, to be open.
In today’s world, where we’re all consumed by digital life, friendship is both harder and simpler to maintain. Sometimes, trying to “design” it feels forced, and you don’t get the same magic.
You have to trust that the relationships that matter will bubble up and return, not always as expected, but as understood. You have to believe in your friendships, even if the connections are brief, unplanned, and shaped by timing rather than deliberate action.
When you force it or when you expect something from it, you’ll likely end up disappointed.
If you attach too much meaning to the moments you interact—or the gaps when you don’t—you create stories about what others think or feel. And those stories often lead to letdowns.
Friendship doesn’t have rules of engagement.
Real friendship is knowing that when you come together—whenever and however that happens—you’ll feel connected, known, and understood, even if it’s fleeting.
It also means taking personal responsibility for being present. Feeling what your friend needs. Sometimes they need a listener. Sometimes they need advice. Sometimes they need a complex conversation. Sometimes they just need to hear your story.
This past weekend, I had all of that and more:
- Quick catch-ups
- Informed conversations
- Deep, meaningful interactions
- I listened to a friend’s story of surviving cancer
- I watched friends present their craft on stage
- I toured a friend’s impressive performance environment
- I laughed—big laughs, little laughs, the kind that come from deep inside
- There were brother and sister hugs, handshakes, and fist bumps
- I listened to stories, and I told some of my own
- I finally met in person some friends I’d only known on Zoom since the pandemic
Because I didn’t force it—because I just allowed it all to unfold—it was rich, beautiful, and it filled my heart and soul with the real food of life.
As I grow older, this is where I find peace, energy, and a deep sense of self—in the richness of friendship, with all its facets and fault lines. However imperfect, when you let friendship be what it is, you feel fulfilled.
So I ask you:
- How does friendship live within you?
- How does it serve your life?
