To Love Is To Learn A New Language

I’ve dedicated myself to understanding friendship for years. I’m not simply interested in it, I obsess over it, I feel and feed on it every day, I live for it.

When I call someone a friend, it’s not a casually thrown-around label. It’s me realising that there’s something about us that, once mixed, will make both of us better people.

With lovers there are milestones — the crush phase, the “do you wanna try?” phase, the “we are official” phase, the proposal, the marriage, the “want kids?”… The sun seems to be every so often setting and rising with them.

But with friends? There isn’t one set of milestones. Not so sequential and bold at least. Friends are mysterious creatures. They’re rarely ritualistic. You don’t know when you become friends, and many times you don’t know when you no longer are.

There’s no friendship counselling, no engagement rings, and no divorce courts either. Friendship doesn’t come with a user’s manual handed down by society. It’s written along the way by the two people, for the two people.

Reciprocity is the very backbone of every friendship.

You’re not raising kids together, you’re not co-owning a company, you’re not staying together because separating is expensive or because society expects you to. You only have each other. The school you shared, you will graduate from. The neighborhood you lived in, you may move out from. The games you played together, you may grow out of. In the end, it’s just you two.

Each with his own personhood. Values. Even despicable qualities.

And with every human being you decide to befriend comes a new language to learn.

Ever thought why we like some of our friends more than others? It’s not just about liking the same color or sharing the same taste in music. It’s about caring enough to give your friend what they need, instead of what you feel like giving.

If what I want from you is an hour of your genuine curiosity to know me better, but what you give instead is “you’re special to me and I think about you every day,” you’re still being selfish. That simple it is.

I’m not saying your words of affirmation are meaningless if what I need is quality time. I’m saying there’s a hierarchy of desires, and what I need and what you give may belong to very different levels in my book.

While your “you look so handsome today” might be the whisky I want, you sitting down with me and giving me your ear may be the water I need.

Two friends are not expected to become one. In fact, it’s the celebration of our uniqueness that makes it so respectful.

And when you show someone that you’re willing to do things a little differently sometimes just to make them feel acknowledged and special, that you’re willing to learn their language, it’s as if you’re saying: Our friendship feels more precious when it’s both of ours.

To love is to learn a new language. And if you’re willing to keep learning, you’ll find yourself fluent in something rarer than romance, rarer than ritual: the everyday miracle of two people choosing each other, again and again.