Friends expand Emotional Range. Emotional Range includes but is not limited to the aspects of self that tend to develop based on situational exposure.
Having friends with segmented purposes, therefore, is not necessarily a short sighted or transactional view that compromises moral or ethical interactions with others. If one values intellectual and emotional development — and those one interacts with does as well — a deeper relationship can be formed while allowing people ample time to also pursue interest specific relationships with others.
For instance, a friend who is serious all the time and enjoys a hobby ie liking to fish can be a super person to simply go fishing with on occasion without a lot of fuss. Wanna go fishing Saturday? Sure. What time and where? Conversation does not need to go deeper than that but friends can equally benefit from quiet talks on a boat or boat dock with a line in the water. Just knowing if there’s ever a crisis someone would care and or miss you if you are no longer there can be the reward of such encounters without anyone needing to know or spend more time with the other.
A friend who likes to get together for travel is always fun if you travel well together. Got a place in mind to go check out? Get together for a week or a long weekend once in a while, enjoy chatting about local history and culture, and give everyone a break from serious conversation. If there’s a crisis some knows you who cares. And if everything is wonderful you have a great friend to join on adventures.
Don’t like eating alone all the time? Start a potluck or dinner club circle. Go out to eat or bring a dish. Chat about food and weather, share the social environment, and once dinner is over be done in an hour.
Younger years encourage closeness and immersion in the lives of others. Age brings wisdom knowing people change, times change, life takes turns, and nothing lasts forever… except perhaps a happy attitude towards being a friend.
Never meet a stranger but do appreciate situational friendships as opportunities to jury relationships much like one would a craft show for art. Some people are those fun to wander the Midway cruising for snacks. Others are like fine art with just the right place to be among contemporaries.
Who you are in the mix depends on each “situationship”. Extend friendship to a concept of mutual medical benefits provided to Friends and bio ancestry fragments that are part of our neural genetic makeup, and friends help tease one another’s memories back (I suspect) not only in this life but in ancestral others where similar people and or social stimuli were also detected.
As such, friends have the medical advantage of making the life and genetic health of those they like and love better just by interacting on an ongoing or intermittent basis together. Simultaneously as friendship pairs over the years, the person acting as a friend as well as the person being a friend enjoy the bio social support, giving each distinct social advantage.
Evaluation of Platonic Form of friend (as trusted social companion — not necessarily a Friend as in a Quaker model) is the most requested prayer apart from asking for help or demanding to know why something happened that someone didn’t like or enjoy. Prayers for a Friend include calls for a mother. Not necessarily the mother one had or for Mother of God but close enough to end with that particular factoid re this particular topic.
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