Friendship.

People, school, and the ways one can get in the way of the other.

In a philosophy class this past week, we studied Aristotle’s thoughts on friendship. The professor was going through the lecture as usual, but at a certain point, his tone of voice changed.

“You guys realize your lives will never be like this again, right? You’re surrounded by people who are roughly the same age as you, who have roughly the same background as you, and who are predisposed to like you. You’ve had a cushion of peers around you for the last 13 or 14 or 15 years of your life, but in another 2 or 3, the bottom drops out. It’s hard to make friends in adulthood, and that’s why you have to be thinking about the importance of friendship before you get there. Cherish it now, but prepare yourself for the difficulty of it when you leave.”

I think there’s two unique aspects to college. The first is the social life. Nowhere will you find such a small place with so many people the same age. The second is the opportunity for learning. It’s easy to see the academic side of college as a curse, but frankly, when ancient philosophers described the ideal life, it looked a lot like the modern college experience. To have your primary concern be nothing but learning, even if it’s sometimes stressful, is a huge gift.

These two sides require a balancing act. I’m realizing more and more I can’t do everything, and that means saying no to some things. Generally speaking, that’s a choice between my social life and school stuff (and often sleep too, but that’s besides the point). Before this last week, I thought I was doing a pretty good job balancing it all. I’m getting almost all A’s despite taking 18 hours, and I felt like I fit in on campus in a way I never have.

I ended up talking to a friend last week, and we just caught up for a bit. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a conversation that was just really good, but that was exactly how I felt talking to this person. I could tell they genuinely cared about how I was doing, and I genuinely cared about them. We were honest with each other about the hard things going on in our lives, and I realized I hadn’t had a conversation like that in a very long time.

There seems to be multiple levels to friendship. There’s people who like your pictures on Instagram, then there’s people who usually say hi when you see them around, and then there’s people you can just always have fun with, the ones you’re willing to put on your shoulders at concerts. At the highest level though, there’s those very few people you can talk to about anything. You know they love you and care about you because they think you’re great, and you return the sentiment. To a certain extent, the higher the level, the more time a friendship takes to maintain.

Frankly, I’ve mixed up my priorities this semester, partly by necessity and partly by choice. Almost all of my time has been spent in the library, working on homework or just reading. I justify it by saying I can’t study as well with people, which is actually true, but at the same time, it’s pulled me away from people. There’s still a lot of people I say hi to on a regular basis, and I still get a lot of likes on Instagram, so it’s not like nobody knows who I am. I just don’t have people I spend time with. As I’ve pulled back from people, it seems like I’ve cut off those upper friendships to an extent. I still love those people, but at least in my mind, our friendships have fallen away now because I spend so little time with people.

That philosophy class happened on a day where every class I had focused on the importance of community in one way or another. It’s cheesy, but I think God shows up in places He knows we’ll be looking, and my brain has always naturally picked up on coincidences. Frankly, that one is too good to be just luck, and I think it’s His way of trying to pound into my head that salvation and the working out of faith are just as much a community experience as an individual one. I’m great at reading my Bible every day, but He shows Himself through people far more than I give Him credit for.

To have faith only with a community and to have faith only apart from one are both bad options. To go to college and not take advantage of the education offered is a terrible waste, but to go to the same place without forming deep friendships is just as bad. Prioritizing only my own development or only relationships with other people are the two poles on the same spectrum, and both extremes are poisonous. I’m currently too far to one side on both counts, and I want to do everything I can to get back to the healthy middle.

At the end of the day, there’s only a year and a half before I leave this social safe haven that is the undergraduate experience. I won’t know 30 people when I go to a concert. I also won’t be getting asked to semi-formals a month in advance, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’ll probably get less likes on instagram too. Especially this semester, I’ve poured myself into my education like never before. The thought is the learning I do now will benefit me for the next 10 or 30 or 50 years, but the same is true of the relationships I have the ability to form. What will sustain me after college is those truly deep friendships I have the opportunity to create now.

I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but I think it starts by giving people my time. I’m gonna start reminding myself how to do that by re-reading Scary Close. In the foreword, the author is described like this. If I can be half as good a friend as he is, I’ll call it a good day.

“Don Miller is one of my closest friends. I know that he loves me because he’s told me. But even if he hadn’t said a word, I’d know Don loved me because I have experienced how Don has treated me during times of tremendous joy, paralyzing sadness, and lingering uncertainty. In a word, he’s been ‘with’ me…I love who Don is, and I love who he’s becoming, and I am grateful for a guy who will put himself between me and what scares me most, even if it costs him a lot.”

Originally published at theforlornemoose.wordpress.com on November 23, 2016.