Once upon a time, there was a young woman, Ella, whom I thought of as a close friend. One day, a mutual friend referred to herself as Ella’s closest friend. That seemed strange to me because I was clearly Ella’s closest friend. It’s not that I was jealous or threatened; rather, I was curious about how we had both come to the same conclusion. Cultivating friendships has always been difficult for me. It takes time and effort to build trust and bond, I was surprised that Ella could have accomplished this with more than one person at the same time. But over the next few days, I observed that just about everyone Ella knew seemed to feel like they were her BFF. Of course they did. Ella has a remarkable gift for making people feel loved and bonded. It’s a miraculous superpower.

I do not possess this superpower.

I’m pretty much Ella’s foil; I tend to be closed-off and wary of people until I get to know them. I can be aloof and it takes energy to get past that, so most people don’t bother trying. I can’t say I blame them. I’ve known a few people like Ella in my life who have an enormous capacity for forming genuine friendships quickly. I was fascinated by Ella’s superpower; what was her secret? Could I crack her code for friendship and steal it for myself? What is a friendship really?

The Ancient Greek word for friendship is philia. It refers to the love that bonds friends together; it’s mutual, reciprocal, and conditional. C.S Lewis explains in his book, The Four Loves, that the people with whom we share activities are companions, but the few who share something deeper are our friends:

“In this kind of love, as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?—Or at least, ‘Do you care about the same truth?’ The [wo]man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance can be our Friend. [S]He need not agree with us about the answer.” (66)

Philia is stronger than acquaintance; it refers to a bond that develops out of mutual quest or Truth:

“The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question Do you see the same truth? would be ‘I see nothing and I don't care about the truth; I only want a Friend,’ no Friendship can arise - though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.” (66)

What then is Ella’s secret? Besides being a kind and empathetic human, she’s adept at discerning Truths. Her secret is quickly finding common ground. It’s beautiful and remarkably simple. I try to emulate Ella, I really do; but as with most things, I’ve found that simple does not equal easy. So I can steal Ella’s code; I’m just rather bumbling at it. Fair enough, I’ll keep trying.

My daughter, Jane, is like Ella in her precocious empathy. She always has been. I can take zero credit for this; Jane inherited her father’s sweet and patient nature. However, when it comes to friends, Jane is more like me. She could have oodles of friends, but she reserves her energy for a few besties she can trust. When she started middle school, she started trying to be as quirky as possible. She did things like making her eyes wiggle in a low-key disturbing way and talking endlessly and obsessively about Pride & Prejudice (yup, there are my genetics).  Pride & Prejudice was not a topic that most of her peers had an interest in sharing with her. Given the treacherous socio-political landscape of middle school, my husband and I gently suggested that her behavior might be off-putting to her peers. Her response to us?

“Oh yeah, I’m being weird on purpose. Anyone who wouldn’t accept me for who I am isn’t likely to be a good friend.”

Well played, Jane. Upon entering middle school, she administered her litmus test and Jane found what she’d been looking for: an Anne Shirley-style bosom friend.  This girl has been Jane’s BFF for three years and our whole family loves her (although we might vomit if we have to hear the dulcet tones of Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy one more time). They discovered some common Truths: Austen is awesome, being intelligent is worthwhile, and it’s okay to be yourself. Just a few months ago, Jane told me she’s glad she doesn’t have to deal with drama because she has such a solid friendship.

Famous. Last. Words.

The long and short of Jane’s story is that she is currently suffering a BFF breakup. I don’t want to cast aspersions on Jane’s friend because she’s in pain, too—she’s moving away this summer—and because friendship is just. so. hard. All of Jane’s empathy skills have not helped; in fact, the more she empathizes, the more her BFF pulls away. Jane is now doing her best to accept that her friend doesn’t want the friendship any longer while trying to figure out how to still be there in case her friend needs her. Good grief, Jane’s pain is awful. I remember this pain. 

I’ve inflicted this pain.

I had a BFF in school who was very dear to me, and with whom I was immature. I cold-shouldered her and it broke our friendship. I regretted it after I behaved that way. I regretted it while I behaved that way. We eventually made up, but it was never the same again. And it’s happened to me, too. These experiences have made me even warier about making friends because the risk of suffering seems too great. The pain of it is unreal. Why bother with friends at all, really?

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” (The Four Loves 71)

Dammit, C.S. Lewis, you’re ruining my point. You hooked me in with the unnecessary part but flipped the script by showing that it’s one of the things that define us as human. Is Lewis saying that just like storge (Affection), philia is an act of humanity? That makes sense. Lewis also writes that “Friendship is…the least natural of loves…we can live and breed without Friendship” (58). But he also points out that “To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves…The modern world, in comparison, ignores it” (57).

Friendship can be ephemeral; once that shared passion or quest ebbs, so too does friendship. Jane told me tearily about how her friend stopped using a book bag that her friend’s mother had made for each of them with Pride & Prejudice fabric. That awesome P&P bag had to go away to show that the basis of their friendship is over.

Why again should we put all that effort into friendship? Oh, right. It makes living worthwhile. Which is wonderful for someone like Ella, who knows how to make friends and how to be a friend. But what about those of us that are a bit clueless or frightened or devastated? How do we go about creating worthwhile lives? As the drama of Jane and her friend has played out, I’ve been thinking a lot about one of my forever-favorite books because it’s a perfect how-to primer for philia:

‘Come and play with me,’ proposed the little prince. ‘I am so unhappy.’
‘I cannot play with you,’ the fox said. ‘I am not tamed.’2 (The Little Prince 79-80)

Yes! It’s The Little Prince! (Pardon my enthusiasm, I adore this book.) The confused Little Prince repeatedly asks the Fox what he means by tamed, to which the fox replies:

‘It is an act too often neglected,’ said the fox. ‘It means to establish ties.’
‘To establish ties?’
‘Just that,’ said the fox. ‘To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other…if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat.’ (80-83)

Friends are the people that draw us out from underground. I’ve gone through stretches of my life wherein I didn’t have a friend, and yes, I survived, but life is so much brighter, so much better when I do have friends. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that there is an art to friendship that I didn’t understand when I was younger. But our friend, the Fox, is an excellent teacher:

‘One only understands the things that one tames,’ said the fox. ‘Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me.’
‘What must I do, to tame you?’ asked the little prince.
‘You must be very patient,’ replied the fox. ‘First you will sit down at a little distance from me—like that—in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day…’
The next day the little prince came back. (83-84)

Friendship, like any other relationship, is a bond that requires investment. Our fox is right; we must be patient with each other. We must really look and really see each other; words are often a source of misunderstanding. It’s crucial that we keep coming back for each other. This is the genius that people like Ella can teach the rest of us. Look for Truth. See commonality. And most importantly: keep your heart open, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

My emotionally intelligent Jane has done everything she can to look and see and come back and still, her friendship appears to be over. And that hurts. But as I watch Jane struggle to recover, and as I think back to all the times I’ve struggled, I keep thinking about my dear friends, the Fox and the Little Prince:

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near—
‘Ah,’ said the fox, ‘I shall cry.’
‘It is your own fault,’ said the little prince. ‘I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you.’
‘Yes, that is so,’ said the fox.
‘But now you are going to cry!’ said the little prince.
‘Yes, that is so,’ said the fox.
‘Then is has done you no good at all!’
‘It has done me good,’ said the fox, ‘because of the color of the wheat fields.’ (86)

Philia does us all good. Jane will never think of Pride & Prejudice without thinking of her friend, just like I’ll never see goldfish crackers or listen to U2 or bake molasses cookies without thinking of my own lost friends. Friends open our lives and our hearts. They make the experience of being a human worthwhile. And it seems harder to cultivate philia as you become an adult, at least to me. But I urge you, just as I’m urging Jane and just as I urge myself: keep your heart open and keep creating philia wherever you can. Keep taming each other. And keep allowing yourself to be tamed.

I asked my friends on Facebook to recommend their favorite books about friendship, and I had an outpouring of suggestions. Thank you to everyone who contributed! If you have a suggestion you’d like to add or would like to share how philia has made your life worth living, please reach out in the comments below or on Instagram. I look forward to hearing from you!

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Notes:

Artwork: Forest by Jeroným Pelikovský is licensed under CC0 Creative Commons.

1)      Lewis, C.S. “Friendship.” The Four Loves. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1991.
2)      Saint Exupéry, Antoine de. The Little Prince. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971.