Random thoughts: Friendships

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” — Muhammad Ali

As I’ve grown older, there has been a change in my relationships with others. I’ve developed a few new friendships, have had some people drop off the friends list, and even renewed some friendships that I thought were long gone.

It made me wonder about the levels of friendships a person has in their lives. We change over the course of a lifetime and our relationships take on different needs. I have a few friendships that have endured most of my life and some others that fizzled after a few years.

Author Geoffrey Greif identified four types of friendships in his book, Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships: Must, Trust, Rust, and Just. While he focuses on male relationships, my guess is that it would hold true for women as well. From my observations, I believe women may have deeper friendships because they are more open to others. But that’s for another post.

For me, most of my relationships fall under the Just category. I like to keep them cordial and open. I enjoy hearing a friendly “Good morning!” from neighbors on my morning walks, or kind smiles from people I casually know from restaurants, stores, social…