Last week, I went to the Smoky Mountains with a group of high school friends. We didn’t realize until we were there that we were celebrating 10 years of friendship. For some of us it had been longer - birth, kindergarten, middle school. But as a group, we all came together our junior year of high school. The trip was lovely but as with any good trip, after six days, it was also time for it to be over.
Not only did our trip remind me how we all came together ten years ago - it also got me thinking about the value of friendship (spoiler alert: it’s really, really valuable!).
Friendships are so important to me - the real friendships, the ones where you’re there for the good moments, the tough moments and sometimes the mundane, everyday life moments and everything in between. The kind of friendships where you can not talk for months, because life happens, but know that when you pick things back up it’s going to be like no time passed at all.
I am thankful to have so many great friends from so many different times in my life. And I love them all deeply. But each group of friends brings a different type of relationship and with it, a different gratitude. So here is my assessment on how each of these types of friendships differ and why they’re all so beautiful in their own way.
Friends Through the Life Phases
High School (or earlier) Friends
I am lucky enough to have a few groups of high school (and middle school and elementary school!) friends that I keep in touch with and (when the stars align) even get to see occasionally. And while I wish I could see them more often, I am even luckier that I have so many smart, talented and adventurous high school friends who are now spread out across the country exploring their passions and building their lives.
I feel SO lucky and SO grateful to still have this relationship with people who watched me grow up. There is so much that sets high school friends apart from the rest.
These are the friends that know your family and your background. You know with college or adult friends when you think, “I wonder what their family is like?” And then you find out and it explains them. With high school friends, you never have to find out, you just know. There is something enduring about friends who know these bits of your life without you having to share the background.
With high school friends, you have the experiences of truly growing up together. On top of the regular growing up experiences, like being really smelly and gross looking, you also have a “coming-of-age” bond. The kind of bond that you only have with friends who you first broke the rules with. They’re the people who were there when you had your first beer, when you were dealing with boy drama, when you got pulled over for drag racing and so much more. In so many ways, these friends shape you in high school and beyond.
It’s because of that growth, innocent shenanigans and anchoring force that these friends feel like home. There is a peace in being reunited with high school friends. I suppose I might feel this more strongly than others because I live away from home and so do many of them. These days, there aren’t a ton of occasions that bring us all together, but almost every time I go home I get to see someone I grew up with. And on those lucky (and rare) days when we’re all in the same city at the same time, we laugh and joke and reminisce about the past, while also reacquainting each other with the new and exciting developments of our futures.
One of my favorite quotes reads:
“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
I feel this to my core every time I am around high school friends and it is indeed something I am so thankful for.
College Friends
College is an amazing, transformative time and college friends are the ones who see you down this path of transformation. The most wonderful thing about college friends is that they are around to experience your passions come to life.
In college, we explore and we learn and we grow immeasurable growth. Career related or not, college is the time that you find the things you love. It is the introductory period of blossoming into the person you want to be. I left college as someone I liked more than when I started - which is exactly what college - and college friends - are for.
College friends are the ones who join you on this journey. They’re the ones with whom you have meaningful conversations about the world. They’re the ones with whom you discuss real, life altering issues - and argue deeply about what is right. And they’re the ones who watch you find your calling, who watch you grow into the person you’re supposed to be. While college friends don’t know all the ins-and-outs of your background at first, they are the friends who bridge the gap between knowing you as a kid and knowing you as a grown up (or at least semi-grown up who has a semi-idea of what life ahead holds). It’s a sacred perspective into your life that only a select few people get to hold.
One of the other interesting things about college friends is that (oftentimes) you also have the pleasure of living with them. While this can be a surefire way to lose friends, those who endure after being your roommate are probably friends for life. Because of the living together situation, these are the friends with whom I feel most comfortable doing nothing. They are the people who I can be around and embrace the silence - I don’t need to fill it with conversation or activities or mindless chatter. We can simply coexist and enjoy each other’s presence. That’s a really beautiful thing that I’m lucky to share with some wonderful people.
Work Friends
After college comes work (at least for me it did!). TBH, it’s a scary time to finish college, watch all your friends move away and have to start something brand new with only a long-distance support system.
So thank goodness for work friends, right?!
While high school and college friends have a lot in common, work friends develop in a totally different way!
I remember courting my first work friend - it felt like tip toeing around a crush, trying to figure out if they wanted to befriend me too and if we should go out on a first friend date. I got lucky - my work friend was also feeling me as a work friend, and we did indeed go out on a first date for wine and cheese. Must have gone well, because we’re still work BFFing to this day!
But seriously, I think starting any kind of adult friendship is hard. Because you don’t know what that other person has going on from a friend perspective (or a general life perspective). Maybe they grew up here or all their college friends stuck around (or both!). Maybe they are homebodies and prefer to spend time at home as often as possible. All of those are great, but it makes it really hard when you’re trying to friend-date somebody and learn the lay of the land. Once you push through the awkwardness though, work friends become such an important group on the friend spectrum!
For one, they are the ONLY people in your life who truly understand your day-to-day. As much as you try to explain your daily life to others, no one will ever completely get it. Except your work friends who are living it!
They are also the people you see most often. I see the people I work with more often than I see my husband! So just to reiterate, I spend most of my life with these people AND they understand my day-to-day life. That’s amazing!! (Unless you don’t like them...then that sucks!) Because of the uniquely wonderful circumstances of work friends, you can cut through so much of the “filler” conversation, or the “getting you up to speed” conversation and just talk. When we’re lucky enough for work friendships to evolve beyond work into real friendships, the ability to cut through the clutter is really comforting .
Basically, get yourselves a work friend turned all-the-time-friend. Or get yourself 17.
Other Miscellaneous Adult Friends
We can’t forget about this group of friends that doesn’t fit into a group of friends! These are your other adult friends. It doesn’t really matter how you met them - maybe you were at the grocery store, maybe it’s a friend of a friend, maybe you were on Bumble BFF! Whatever it is, this group of misc. friends has a unique trait that no other group of friends do!
These random adult friends are the ONLY friends in your life that you didn’t meet by some level of convenience and proximity. Don’t get me wrong - these friends probably live nearby and you probably didn’t meet them doing something outrageous. But all the other aforementioned groups of friends came to you through strong commonalities - same school, same university, same job.
Because these random adult friends formed in more unique ways, it's possible (even likely!) that you have more in common with this group of friends than any other! Because these friends are 100% by choice. For the record - I am NOT hating on any of my other groups of friends - I’m just saying, we didn’t like, happen upon each other in the street one day and just hit it off.
Another great thing about random adult friends is that (hopefully) by the time we’re adults, we tend to be less judgemental. We (hopefully) don’t care as much about if our friends have the cool new jeans or that edgy emo look. We (hopefully) don’t care as much about our friends’ socioeconomic statuses or living situations. We (hopefully) don’t care as much about anything besides being a supportive friend who’s there when they need us.
And because we don’t just run into these friends in our usual every day life, we have to work for these friendships. So the ones that stick are meant to be.
Friends Become Family
To be honest, as all of these friendships evolve, the lines blur and they all just become family. Another favorite quote of mine goes a little something like this:
“It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.” -Agatha Christie
One of the amazing things about raw, unfiltered friendships is there is a LOT of looking ridiculous. And it is so, so true that in those moments you realize how much you love people. It’s in the ridiculous moments, the vulnerable moments, the celebratory moments and the really, really hard moments. In those tucked away, small moments friendships grow. And I have my fingers crossed (even though I don’t think we need any luck!) that these friendships are here for a lifetime.
Cheers, Lisa
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