The love we speak of at Valentine’s Day almost always pertains to the romantic variety. We make our holiday efforts on behalf of that person with whom we are entwined in this manner or wish to be.
But there’s something we tend to overlook on Valentine’s Day, and that’s friendship — a lost art of love in today’s world.
Can two partnered people be successful in their union if they are not also friends? Can an artist truly be great if she doesn’t seek to be a friend to those who partake of her work by offering them something vital and helpful that may be lacking in their own lives?
A friend is loyal, protective, nurturing. They help us grow. We can turn to them. They’re true to their word. A parent doesn’t want to be a friend to their child in the “one of the gang” sense, but these tenets of friendship also undergird parenting.
To have a true friend, one must be a true friend.
What happens often now is that people find someone with whom to pair up, and they remove themselves — as if on an island.
Children are had. The family unit all but has a circular wall put up around it for the adults. Sure, Dad knows this dad from Little League practices, and Mom joined a book club with other moms. But actual friendship requires effort, empathy, vulnerability and courage, and rarely do we “show out” in these areas.
Think of the couples you know. How many of those people have true friends? Consider yourself. How many true friends do you have?
I’d bet that most of us didn’t expect it to be like this, for it to be hard to make friends and have friends. There was a time in our lives where we never would have thought of our future self as friendless.
We may have encountered a maxim such as, “You’re lucky to ever have a single real friend,” but a part of us likely viewed that as clever lip service. A quote that sounds weighty, but surely it’s not that grim?
Or we’re a bit like that selfish grasshopper who has himself a gay time in summer without thought of choices and consequences and then must be bailed out in winter by the ant who made a point of becoming wiser.
There are seasons to friendship. Friendships are easier to start in school, during the spring and summer of our lives, before we’re prone to retreat within ourselves, busted and reluctant.
Fall comes along, and if we’ve not bunkered down with our official family unit, we may find ourselves embarrassed by our friendlessness and taking pains to hide the truth. Phrases like “Living my best life” may or may not be used.
Then in life’s winter, friendship can seem like a memory, a dream left over from another existence.
I’d argue that everything that is worthwhile in life involves friendship. To sit with one’s thoughts, doing nothing else, is an act of friendship. From you to you, for you, which in turns helps you be a better friend to someone else. If you aren’t open and vulnerable with yourself, you won’t be with anyone else either. Say it again: To have a true friend, one must be capable of being a true friend.
Friendship means making sure someone else is OK and then ministering to yourself. Who does that now? Who looks outward first? Who looks outward, period? Who looks outward for reasons other than seeing what others can do for us, hand to us, offer us? Remunerate us for the latest selfie we posted.
If you love, if you seek to be loved, if you wish to love better, be a friend. Build anew as a person who is able to be a part of the best kind of relationship any of us may have with others, which is right, decent, giving. Friendship is the foundation, even when we call the soul of it other things.
If you can’t be a true friend, then you will become a stranger to love, whatever form love takes. Just because Valentine’s Day cards don’t say this doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Colin Fleming is the author of “Sam Cooke: Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963,” an entry in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series.
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