PARENT

Ingredients for Friendship

"It's ok, Oliviana, I will take care of you because you are my best friend!" said my daughter to her favourite stuffed toy cat. I watched with fascination as she went around her room, breathing life into each of her stuffed "friends". Her friendships are very real and offer her solace and comfort to her through the night. This got me thinking about friendships in general.

As someone who has always taken the friendships in her life very seriously, I got to thinking about the variety of friends I have had in my lifetime and how they have transcended different cultural and geographical barriers, as well as the passing of time. It appears to me that our different friendships are like layers of an onion. Each layer represents a need that is fulfilled by that particular friendship. The depth and closeness of that friendship will depend on how far it is from the "core". Each of us needs a friendship that fills a void within ourselves. Perhaps something that we know on a subconscious level that is lacking; for example; I have a friend who is very calming to my sometimes high key personality, she gives me equilibrium.

Perhaps we also consciously seek out friends who possess qualities that we lack and hope that those qualities will indeed rub off onto us. The thinking is acquisition by association.

As we pass through life, some people at first appear like an artichoke. Prickly and tough on the outside, but once you strip away those fibrous layers, a tender heart is revealed. It takes invested time and effort to peel away those layers and most people just don't have the time, they prefer to get their artichoke hearts in a can, already peeled, with no work involved.

We live in a very time-pressed society, where coaxing and nurturing a friendship is "Z" on most people's lists of priorities. Their approach to friendships is more like instant cake mix, with a "just add water and bake" attitude. I feel that it just doesn't taste the same as if it was made from scratch. If you want a "cake" that is fluffy without much substance, then having an "angel food cake" type friendship is more for you. I want a friendship that is authentic in nature and has the consistency and substance of heavy pound cake. "Time" and "energy" are the two main ingredients for that recipe. Of course, there is the odd instance of a friendship being made from the "pound cake" recipe, but flopping in the oven and coming out as a fluffy soufflé, but that is a discussion for another article.

Living as we do today, we move through life where people do not, as a general rule, reach out and try to connect. Instead, we have become more and more distant from one another as people and human contact is avoided rather than embraced. We live in a society of withdrawn reticence. We live in a world where cyber contact replaces real live human contact. Email replaces good, old fashioned letters and commitment to a friendship is reflected by who is or who isn't in one's email address book. I find that I feel a great sense of dissatisfaction being surrounded by people that to me are like cardboard cutouts. I can't get a sense of who they really are, as people. A distance is created and that makes it difficult or nearly impossible to bridge the gap.

We seek out space away from one another. No person is an island. We need social interaction, to exchange ideas and thoughts as a way of seeing how we are progressing in this strange journey called "life". This reminds me of the movie "Castaway" in which Tom Hanks' character has such a deep seated need for companionship that he creates a close friend out of a ball and even risks his life to rescue it in one scene. The need for friendship is profoundly human. It is part of our condition as human beings to want to feel connected, understood and empathized with. The quest for the ultimate meeting of the minds is universal.

So next time you brush past a stranger, just think - this could be your future best friend, confidante and kindred spirit. We all have a like-minded soul out there waiting for us to reach out. If we are very fortunate we will meet that person, but only if we are willing to step outside of ourselves, for a moment.

Perhaps my daughter's stuffed cat "Oliviana" knows the secret to a solid friendship, she never judges, she just offers consistent comfort and support in times of need and in return receives unwavering loyalty. I think that there is a lesson to be learned in that.

Editor's note: For an additional look at women's friendships, check Janice G. Raymond's 1986 analysis of women's friendships, A Passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female Affection.