In a world where we all have a few hundred friends, what does real friendship look like?
“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to appellation.” –George Washington
I have a love-hate relationship with social media.
I love how it connects me to people near and far, allows me to keep the tenuous connections that were made years ago, which otherwise would have been lost.
But I hate the illusion it creates of connection when we “like” an old friend’s ultrasound picture or see what people are up to without ever asking them.
Facebook calls them friends. Instagram and Twitter call them followers (which sounds kind of cult-ish now that I think about it). But in this day and age, where almost all of us are using this mode of communication, what does real friendship even look like anymore?
Real friendship according to George Washington
As a powerful general and first president of a brand new country, Washington probably had his share of friends, both the real and the hangers-on. Being careful who he confided in was important.
And while we aren’t likely to share military strategy with the wrong person, giving too much of our intimate selves to the wrong people can come back and hurt us later on.
“One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” (Proverbs 18:24)
A true friend holds our confidences as tight as their own secrets. They stand with us and never against us.
Washington also cautions that friendship should grow slowly. And to let adversity test it before giving it the name of real friendship.
This would be the opposite of the quick “Follow” click on our phone screens. The fair-weather friends we make that soon disappear when we are no longer easy, agreeable, or convenient.
I’m not saying that all friendships are shallow. They aren’t. But as adults, we need to draw the line between friends we say happy birthday to every year, but little else, and the friends whose shoulders we cry on, who we let watch our kids, and who know the deepest aches in our hearts.
Real friendship should be like sisterhood. You may disagree. You may not always talk when life gets busy. But when things get bad in either of your lives, you drop what you’re doing to be there, in person or on the phone.
True friendship is not the domain of social media and text messages. It’s real hugs and long phone calls. It’s physical cards in the mail and hand-holding at funerals.
True friendship is tried in fire and lasts a lifetime. Those friendships, those men and women, are worthy of the appellation.
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