Depth

Sleep is an important.  In my tenure as a college student, I’ve found that I am constantly sacrificing my sustainably comfortable “eight hours” for something that looks a lot more like “zero.”  I have deeply considered why I would knowingly shortchange my sleep habits and the answer comes down to a deceptively simple answer:

People.

Most often, I’m up late not finishing a late assignment (or blog post) but talking to the people here at my university.  As such, I’ve been thinking lately about the nature of friendship.  I have tons of acquaintances, but far fewer deep friendships.  Having a friendship means more than having a few inside jokes and memories to reminisce about.  I’ve found my three favorite ways to get to know other people in a meaningful way.  Those that I count as some of my best friends are those that I have:

1)  Talked to in some significant or consistent way.

2)  Worked with on some project: official, academic, or otherwise.

3)  Played with.  Laughing whilst playing Frisbee, kickball, basketball, or rolling tape down the halls of the dorm counts.

By the very nature of this list, physical proximity is a fairly important aspect … but by no means a prerequisite.  I would contend that the depth of a relationship allows it to continue in spite of spatial limitations.  To quote Elisabeth Foley, “The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.”

In our virtual-mediated communication landscape of today, there is a unique ability to maintain a friendship that would otherwise be lost to time and distance.  Yet, I can’t help but question the quality of a friendship that is, by its very nature, limited to short snippets of emoticons, photo-sharing, and YouTube links.  You may be wondering, “Woah!  Where did the unnecessary remarks about the internet landscape come from?”

The criterion is depth.  I’ve heard it described this way:  When you have three or so points of commonality you probably have a “functional” friendship with that person.  You can get along quite comfortably.  People, however, get stuck at this point.  Rather than digging deeper, getting to know one another more, or generally moving into a more meaningful friendship, they are “comfortable.”  Instead, one should try to develop a “relational” friendship.  I certainly understand that you can’t be best friends with everyone and maybe not even good friends with a lot of people.  Simply, it is important to think about the relationships that we all have with our community, each other, and our nearest and dearest friends.  Depth ought to be a common goal of our friendships, no matter how well we might know each other already.

Only a few things in life are really important.  I am becoming more and more convinced that friendship is one of them.