The Friends Who Walk With Us

I have been thinking a lot about friendship lately.

Maybe it’s something that comes with age. Or maybe it’s just living long enough to notice how many people have walked beside you for a while. Some friends have been around for decades. Others were there for a shorter time and then moved on. A few are gone now, but I still think of them sometimes, remembering what they said or wondering how they’d react to things happening in my life.

I’ve been lucky when it comes to friendship. Some of my friends go back to my teenage years. There are people who have known me through most of my adult life and have seen my life change in ways none of us expected. We’ve lived in different places, taken different paths, and built our own lives, but we’ve still managed to stay connected.

Mary Shelley once wrote, “The companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds, which hardly any later friend can obtain.” There is truth in that. Someone who knew you before the jobs, responsibilities, and accumulated years knows a version of you that newer friends never quite can. They remember the person who was still trying to figure out who he would become.

My oldest and closest friendship started when we were young. Rick and I met back in junior high. He knew almost every version of me, even the ones I’d rather forget. When he died a few years ago, I realized that friendship couldn’t be replaced, because the history couldn’t be replaced. No one else remembers the same people, places, embarrassing moments, losses, jokes, and all the little details we shared over the years.

That’s one of the gifts of friendship. A friend becomes part of our life story. Many years ago (long enough that they still “printed” the Appalachian student newspaper), I’d picked up a copy of the ASU student paper on a visit to Boone. It contained an unattributed quote that grabbed hold and stayed with me all my life. In fact, it’s memorialized in a small frame in the front room of the house, cross-stitched by my friend, Glenda.

 Lois Wyse described a good friend as “a tie to the past, a road to the future.” I like that. Old friends carry parts of our past that we may have forgotten ourselves. They remember what once mattered to us. They know where some of the scars came from. And sometimes, simply talking with them helps us understand how far we have traveled.

Some friendships start later and become just as important, but in different ways. Glenda was one of the first people I met when I moved to Greensboro after college and mortuary school. I was starting a new chapter in my life, though I didn’t realize just how new it would be. She was there as I began coming out. She celebrated with me when things went well and sat with me when they didn’t. We stayed friends long after I left Greensboro, until her death a couple of years ago.

I think about people like that and wonder how different my life would be if they hadn’t shown up when they did.

C.S. Lewis wondered if lifelong friendships start when we meet someone who sees something in us we’ve been searching for all along. Maybe that’s a bit romantic, but I get what he meant. Sometimes you meet someone and just feel a connection you can’t explain. The conversation flows, trust builds, and something just clicks.

The Stoics understood the importance of those relationships. Seneca wrote often about friendship and treated it as part of a good life. One line in my notes has stayed with me. “Nothing delights the mind as much as loving and loyal friendship.”

He also thought we should choose our friends carefully, because the people around us shape who we are. For Seneca, friendship was more than just companionship. A good friend helps us grow. They can tell us when we’re wrong, steady us when our emotions take over, and remind us of the person we want to become.

Friends have done that for me.

Sometimes friends helped me with advice. Other times, it was a joke that stopped me from taking things too seriously. Sometimes a conversation helped me see things differently. And sometimes, there was nothing that needed to be said.

When my mother died, a friend from my hometown just sat with me in silence. I remember that moment because nothing needed explaining. He didn’t try to make my grief smaller or search for the right words. He was simply there.

No philosophy could have said more.

Friends play different roles in our lives. One might offer wisdom when we’re facing a tough decision. Another brings laughter when things get too serious. Someone else might just give us a safe place to be tired. Some friends challenge us, others comfort us, and the rare ones do both.

I used to think the length of a friendship showed how important it was. Now, I’m not so sure. Some people stay in our lives for decades. Others are with us for just a few years, or even just a season. Their impact can still last.

Some of my friendships ended because people moved away. Others faded because life got busy. A few ended more painfully. In an earlier essay, I wrote about a friend whose silence I eventually had to accept. I could grieve the loss and still be grateful for what the friendship was. The Stoic lesson was hard but helpful: people aren’t ours to keep. Their presence is a gift, and gifts don’t come with guarantees.

That doesn’t make friendship less important. If anything, it makes paying attention to friendship even more important.

Isabel Allende wrote that “true friendship resists time, distance, and silence.” Some friendships do. I have several like that. Months may pass without much contact, then a phone call begins, and the distance disappears almost immediately. We pick up the conversation somewhere near where we left it.

Other friendships need more care.

I know I’ve sometimes let friendships drift more than I meant to. Life gets busy. Work takes over. Distance matters. We tell ourselves we’ll call next week, and suddenly a year has gone by. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to be more deliberate about reaching out. Sometimes it’s just a quick message to say I was thinking of someone. It doesn’t have to be complicated.

Seneca warned, “While we are postponing, life speeds by.” That applies to friendship as much as anything else.

I’ve also been surprised by how new friendships keep showing up.

This latest season of my life has brought changes I didn’t ask for and uncertainty I would gladly have skipped. Yet it has also brought many new people into my life. I’ve met people through civic work, church, politics, community events, work, and even just chatting over coffee. Some will stay acquaintances. Some are already becoming more than that.

It’s encouraging to make new friends later in life. When I was younger, I probably thought the important friendships would happen early and last forever. That hasn’t been true for me. Life keeps bringing new people my way.

Some people show up with the wisdom I need right then. Others bring energy or curiosity. A few seem to remind me that there’s still joy ahead.

I don’t know which of these new friendships will last twenty years. At this point, that’s not really the right question. I know what they bring now, and I’m learning to appreciate that without needing to predict the future.

That feels Stoic to me.

Marcus Aurelius often reminded himself that people are made for each other. This idea shows up throughout his writing and leads to the bigger Stoic idea of sympatheia, which means our lives are connected. Friendship makes that idea real. It’s not just about humanity in general, but about the person across the table who listens when you need to talk.

Friendship also changes us in ways we might not notice until years later.

I sometimes hear myself saying things my friends once said. I catch myself responding with patience I learned from someone else. I encourage others because someone encouraged me when I needed it. A friend’s kindness can last long after the moment it was given.

That might be one of the things I value most about friendship now. What we receive from friends doesn’t have to stop with us.

The person who helped me through a difficult season may never meet the person I help years later. But something still passes between them through me. Wisdom travels that way. So does courage. So does kindness. Sometimes even a good joke survives the trip.

Seneca wrote, “Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.” Friendship teaches us how to recognize those opportunities because someone first recognized them in us.

I hope I have thanked my friends enough. I suspect I have not.

Some friends are still close enough that I can thank them. Others have drifted far enough away that my gratitude just lives quietly in my memory. And there are friends like Rick and Glenda I can’t call anymore. Their part of the conversation is over, but their influence isn’t. I carry pieces of them forward.

That’s how friendship works over a lifetime. People walk with us for part of the journey. Some stay longer than others. They help us see where we’ve been, understand where we are, and sometimes find the courage to take the next step. And then, if we’re paying attention, we do the same for someone else.

Maybe that’s one of the quiet duties of friendship: to accept what others give us with gratitude, to give something of ourselves in return, and to pass some of that goodness on.

I have had the joy of being loved by good friends.

I’m still learning just how much their friendship has become part of who I am.

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