Friendship and Impermanence
“When friendship becomes memory, wisdom remains.”
His email finally arrived, short but heavy with finality. He began with kindness, offering condolences for the recent loss of my Mother. He assured me that he had never been angry with me, that my worry of having hurt our friendship was misplaced. But then came the words that closed the door: he had chosen silence, he said, because life and people had drained him. He had nothing left to give. He wanted to be quiet, invisible, and left alone. He wished me well but asked me not to reach out again.
There was definitely relief. I hadn’t broken something precious. But the sadness was real, too. M had been a steady presence during a challenging and vulnerable time in my life. He’d come to visit for a weekend in Greensboro, where I lived at the time. It was when I was first coming out to people close to me. My very best friend, someone I’d thought of as a brother, had walked away when I told him. That had hurt.
When I told Mason, his first thought was to ask if I’d told Jeff and how he’d taken it. When I told M that I didn’t think Jeff and I were friends anymore, he simply stepped forward, hugged me, and told me it didn’t matter to him. That simple kindness gave me the strength to continue my coming out journey, and I only recently told him in a letter how important that small and simple kindness was to me throughout the rest of my life.
His friendship mattered. It still does. And yet, it now lives only in memory.
How do we live with that kind of loss, the impermanence of relationships we once thought would endure?
The Nature of Friendship
Friendship is one of the most unpredictable gifts in life. Some people enter our story for a brief chapter, others seem like permanent fixtures. Too often, we assume the latter will remain with us, walking beside us into old age. But life rarely honors that assumption.
M was more than just a college buddy. He was a presence that steadied me when I needed someone most. Those years were not easy for me, and I’m not sure how I would have managed them without the kindness and constancy of his friendship. It is no exaggeration to say that he helped carry me when I had difficulty walking on my own.
I’m reminded of a favorite unattributed quote I’d read in the ASU Student Paper (back when they still “printed” a paper). “Being a true friend is an art; having one is a gift.” M’s friendship was certainly a gift I treasure to this day.
Friendships like that leave marks that never fade. Yet they also remind us how fragile these bonds are. Sometimes they drift apart due to neglect or distance. At other times, they end abruptly, either by death or by decision. M’s letter was not cruel. It was honest about what he needed, but it left me with the ache of something beautiful that could not last.
The Stoic View of Impermanence
The Stoics knew this ache well. Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor who spent so much of his reign confronting loss, wrote: “Everything we have is on loan from fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission—children, wife, body, even our very breath.” Nothing belongs to us in perpetuity. It is all entrusted to us for a season, to be used wisely and then returned.
Epictetus made the same point in starker terms: “Never say of anything, ‘I have lost it,’ but, ‘I have returned it.’ Has your child died? It has been returned. Has your wife died? She has been returned. Has your estate been taken? That, too, has been returned.” Harsh as those words may sound to modern ears, their meaning is clear: loss is not theft. It is the natural order reclaiming what was never ours to possess forever.
When I apply this lens to M’s letter, I see his friendship differently. For many years, it was given to me, and it sustained me. Now it has been returned. Not because of my failure, not because of anger or betrayal, but because his path demanded solitude. My grief remains, but the sting of injustice softens. This was never mine to guarantee. It was always a gift on loan.
Grieving Without Clinging
But does Stoicism demand we feel nothing? No. The caricature of Stoics as cold or unfeeling misses the point. Marcus Aurelius mourned deeply the loss of children. Seneca wrote movingly of friendship and grief. Their aim was not to banish sorrow but to keep it from becoming an anchor that drags the soul into despair.
Grief is natural. Clinging is what multiplies pain. I can honor the sadness of M’s absence without chaining myself to longing for what will not be. I can remember with gratitude, rather than regret. As Seneca wrote in On the Shortness of Life: “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” To waste the present by endlessly replaying past losses is to miss the gift of today.
So I grieve, yes. But I also give thanks for the season when M was beside me, and for the strength his friendship gave me. That gratitude steadies me more than clinging ever could.
Modern Echoes of Stoic Wisdom
The French philosopher Pierre Hadot, who revived Stoicism for the modern world, offered a phrase that resonates here: “We must live each instant as if it were to be lived again for all eternity.”
Applied to friendship, this means showing up fully while the bond is alive. It means not assuming permanence, but honoring presence. Too often, we take friendships for granted until distance or death interrupts them. Hadot reminds us that the practice of philosophy is not abstract but lived in how we speak, how we listen, how we treat one another, while we still can.
This is what M’s silence teaches me even now: don’t neglect the friends who are still within reach. Don’t assume tomorrow will look like today. Be present, be grateful, be attentive.
Practical Applications
How can we embody this in our daily lives? A few practices stand out.
- Daily reflection on impermanence. Each night, recall one friendship that blessed you that day, even in a small way. Hold it as a gift, not a guarantee.
- Letters of gratitude. Write to friends not just when they are gone but while they are alive and near. A simple word of thanks can honor the bond before impermanence claims it.
- Rituals of release. When a friendship ends, whether by choice, drift, or death, create a ritual of letting go. Write an unsent letter. Burn it, bury it, or place it in a book. Mark the memory, and then free yourself from the weight of longing.
For me, that means acknowledging M’s decision without bitterness. He has chosen silence. I have chosen gratitude. Both paths can coexist without conflict.
Impermanence as Teacher
The truth is simple, if not easy: all friendships are impermanent. Some last decades, some dissolve quietly, some end in sudden rupture. But each one shapes us. Each one leaves an imprint.
M’s friendship was a gift during a season when I desperately needed one. That can never be undone. His decision to walk alone does not erase what we shared. It only marks the end of one chapter.
What remains is the lesson: to love without possession, to grieve without despair, to hold gratitude above regret. The Stoics were right. Everything is on loan. That is not a reason for bitterness but for reverence.
So I will carry M’s memory not as a wound but as a reminder. Friendship is precious precisely because it cannot be guaranteed. The only wise response is to cherish it fully while it is here, and to let it go with grace when it must return to the flow of time.
