The Power of Friendship

I do believe in friendship! I do! I do!

Hello Friends,

I’m sorry for the delay in getting this newsletter out to you. I’m back from another skirmish with the monster, Fatigue. It was an ugly one, so I had to completely clear my calendar to give myself a fighting chance. I’ve survived though and it’s good to be back. Happy reading!

The Fairy Tale of Friendship

I’m going to be brutally honest: for a very long time, I was convinced that friendship was a load of tosh, just another fairy tale like one true love, unicorns and over-night successes.

If you think about it, the idea of a friendship does seem like a pretty implausible thing. A stranger, with no blood-ties, familial responsibilities or financial gain to motivate them, chooses to not only get to know you as a person but actively and willingly spend time with you; chooses to listen to your whining, to support your weird lifestyle choices and stand by you through dating disasters, family traumas and existential panics.

Why? Why would someone do that? Why would someone choose to do that?

My answer for a long time was: they wouldn’t. They don’t. People are going to run the moment your acquaintance starts to cost more than the occasional coffee or cinema ticket.

I know, I’m horribly cynical.

To fair, I was scarred from an early age by bad friendship experiences. Grab the popcorn and I’ll tell you a sad story…

The year is Nineteen-Ninety-Something. I’ve just started primary school. At the start of the year, I make three friends and they are all boys. One of them is called Davide. I don’t know why I remember that. We played together every break time. For some reason it was Mummies and Daddies, and I honestly don’t know why. It wasn’t my idea. I was used to playing Superman or Bucky O’Hare with my cousin, I didn’t want to play Mummies and Daddies. Anyway. One break time, I find myself on my own, with no one to play with. I have no idea where my friends have disappeared to and I don’t at this point really know any of the other kids well enough to ask to play with them. So, I end up sitting on my own until a concerned teacher comes over to see if I’m okay.

My parents decide to buy me a skipping rope so I have something to do at playtime other than sit by myself. The first day that I take my skipping rope to school, my three friends reappear. They’ve sought me out because they’ve seen the skipping rope and want to borrow it; they’re playing Batman and it will make a good utility belt. Because I don’t want to be disagreeable, I lend them the skipping rope. One of them suggests that maybe I could come and play with them, to which another replies that no, I can’t play Batman with them because I’m a girl. And that’s it. Off they go with my skipping rope and each other, and there I am, on my tod again, feeling somewhat mortified and confused.

Are we not friends anymore?

Did I do something wrong?

Did they stop playing with me because they wanted to play Batman?

Why didn’t they tell me?

I want to play Batman too.

Soon after, my teacher stands me up in front of the whole class, reveals that I have no one to play with and asks for a volunteer to be my friend. I nearly die of shame. The last thing I want is a pity-friend.

In the end, I did befriend a couple of the girls in my class, but a year later we moved to Dorset and I had to start over in a new school. This time I easily made a friend. And a mortal enemy. Not many six-year-olds can say they have a mortal enemy… even if it was entirely one-sided. The friend was called Emma. The enemy was called Sarah.  

Sarah and Emma had been best friends before I came along (a fact of which I had not been aware) and Emma had ditched Sarah to play with me. Hence, Sarah developed an intense hatred for my very existence and became the first person (and only person, actually—you’ve got to credit her for her honesty) to tell me to my face that she hated me. I mean really, really hated me. For the best part of a year, I was the target of a very intense death-glare every time I stepped into the playground.

It wasn’t long before Emma ditched me for someone else. Needless to say, Sarah was viciously delighted. Bless her.

So, before I was even seven years old, I was ruined for friendship. I had learnt a lesson that I carried with me through the next couple of decades. Friendship is fickle. It’s fake. It’s nothing but a fairy tale. And I was better off without it.

Over my entire school career, that impression never changed; it was only confirmed, over and over again. I was careful to never take declarations of friendship too seriously and to hold friends lightly. I never trusted myself completely to anyone outside of my immediate family. Friendships had a best-before date on them. Eventually they’d go bad or the tide of life would pull both parties apart. It was an inevitability. A foregone conclusion.

I made good friends at university, but after graduation everyone went their separate ways (mostly London-wards), I went back home to Dorset and the distance made seeing each other difficult.

And then I became a teacher and all hope of a social life withered and died in the first term of my NQT year.

But who needed friends anyway? It wasn’t like I was a particularly good friend myself, too much of an introverted, socially awkward old-soul to build a dynamic, meaningful relationship with anyone my own age.  On my own at least I was free to be my weird little self without being looked at askance or subjected to more death-glares. No one was going to get me or tolerate me enough to actually want to be a true friend, the kind who sticks around no matter what because they like you THAT much.

I didn’t believe in fairy tales; why would I go looking for one? 

THE END.

…

Not really.

Thankfully.

I Do Believe in Friendship! I Do! I Do!

A few years ago, just before lockdown, my perspective on friendship began to change. Just when I’d resigned myself to being a lone wolf and outsider for the rest of my life, I accidentally joined a church (it happens) and found myself befriended in a way I’d never encountered before. My now best friend literally sat next to me one Sunday, introduced herself, told me she was going to be my friend and I was stuck with her from now on. Weirdly, instead of freaking me out, this approach totally worked and she’s now my closest friend. I’m so grateful to have her in my life and I wouldn’t be without her.

Interestingly, on paper, we probably wouldn’t seem like an obvious pairing. She’s an extreme extravert and I’m an extreme introvert. She’s friendly, fluffy and pink-loving. I’m cynical, socially-backward and nerdy. She’s a hardworking, ambitious go-getter. I’m a chaotic, slovenly creative. We have different interests, tastes and ways of perceiving and dealing with the world. But it works. And I think that’s for one important reason: we both chose this friendship.

I think choice is often underestimated in relationships. What I’ve learnt over the years, is that the strongest relationships are the ones with intention behind them. I think this is true of any type of relationship: platonic, romantic or familial. I’ve watched many people drift in and out of relationships, particularly romantic ones, because there had been little intention behind them. Sometimes, one, or both parties, seem to be hedging their bets with the relationship, as if they’re just filling the gap whilst they wait for a better prospect to come along.

Sometimes this is even how it feels in platonic relationships. If you’ve ever been the last single person standing in a friendship group, you probably know what it’s like when friends who once desperately needed you in their lonely singlehood perform the well-known disappearing act of the recently coupled. One minute they can’t live without you. The next minute you’re surplus to requirements. Which is a shame, because even those living their happily-ever-after need platonic friendships.

No Greater Love

I was reminded recently in a preach at church of this wonderful Bible verse:

‘Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.’

—John 15:13

We live in a world that somewhat idolises romantic love. Finding ‘one true love’ is held up as the greatest quest we can fulfil in this life. And yet, this verse tells us that the greatest love we can experience is not romantic but platonic: the love of a friend willing to lay down their life for us.

Looking around me, I see a world that’s yearning for love. With how much our society is saturated with dating shows, rom-coms, celebrity power couples and a wedding industry worth an estimated £14.7 billion, you’d think the love everyone is seeking is romantic. But I’d argue that there’s an even greater yearning for friendship.

If you take a second look at the stories we tell, particularly those that end up with cult-level followings, it becomes apparent that we have a strong, innate desire for friendship. I watch a lot of anime, and much of that is friendship-orientated, with the rivals-turned-friends or frenemies tropes being particularly popular. Whether it’s My Hero Academia, Naruto, Food Wars or Yu-Gi-Oh, friends in these stories save each other, literally and figuratively (depending on the genre). They support, challenge, grow and push each other to be better. They help each other make the right choices and they are there to pick up the pieces when mistakes are made. They don’t give up on their friendships, even when they appear too broken to repair. In fact, it’s these friendships that are the draw of the stories. The draw of almost every story.

What would The Lord of the Rings be without the fellowship of the nine; or Star Wars without Hans, Luke and Leah; Friends without Joey and Chandler; or D’Artagnan without Aramis, Athos and Porthos?

Even stories as recent as Netflix’s 2022 film The School for Good and Evil, which I watched just the other day, prioritise platonic love over romantic. In this case, the film literally turns the fairy tail trope of true love on its head by focusing on the saving power of the friendship between the two protagonists. True love is not the reserve of just princes and the damsels they save. Thank goodness.

All of these stories reveal our need for true friendship. For friends who are authentic and faithful. Friends who choose us for who we are, and not for what they can get from us. Friends who aren’t afraid to put in the hard work and won’t run away the moment friendship starts to cost something.

True friendship doesn’t have to be a fairy tale. And we have a great example to follow in Jesus, who demonstrated the greatest love by laying down his life for us on the cross.

So, because we’re a big fan of context, here’s John 15:13 in context:  

‘ “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.” ’

If you’re in relationship with Jesus, then you’ve already got your happy-ever-after. But if we also obey his command to ‘love one another’ in the same way, then we can turn true friendship from a fairy tale into reality.

I can now say with all honesty, and with fairy-saving fervency, that I do believe in friendship. And I’m going to do my best to be a faithful friend too.

I’d love to hear your tales of friendship (good and bad). Feel free to share your stories or give a shout-out for those people in your life who have been a good friend to you.

Let’s be friends to each other as we keep figuring this stuff out together.

PJ