Without Them, Your Life Would Be Pathetic
An ode to friendship of the highest quality.
“Most humbling of all is to comprehend the lifesaving gift that your pit crew of people has been for you, and all the experiences you have shared, the journeys together, the collaborations, births and deaths, divorces, rehab, and vacations, the solidarity you have shown one another. Every so often you realize that without all of them, your life would be barren and pathetic. It would be Death of a Salesman, though with e-mail and texting.
The marvel is only partly that somehow you lured them into your web twenty years ago, forty years ago, and they totally stuck with you. The more astonishing thing is that these greatest of all possible people feel the same way about you—horrible, grim, self-obsessed you. They say—or maybe I said—that a good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our bosom friendships. You could almost flush with appreciation. What a great scam, to have gotten people of such extreme quality and loyalty to think you are stuck with them. Oh my God. Thank you.”
— Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
See more on friendship, romance, and transitions in my new book, The Variable Life: Finding Clarity and Confidence in a World of Choices. Learn more and get it before anyone else, here through December 23.
