Write This: Friendship's Paradox
Engaging Honestly with the Spirit of Camaraderie
Welcome to the January installment of Write This, where Solum presents a brief reflection and writing prompt for you to engage with in your preferred medium. You can either delve into the prompts on your own, or join our Paid Subscriber Workshops in our Substack chat, where you can submit your piece to receive enriching feedback from fellow peers and members of Solum’s masthead.
Most of us have had them at some point in our lives: people we feel safe enough, bold enough, to call our friends. Maybe you have a whole gaggle, a seemingly endless list of phone numbers you call when you want to play soccer or start a book club. Maybe you have a core two or three, friends freely chosen to share your proudest joys and worst disasters.
Whatever the case may be, I think we can agree that friendship is an essential part of living a rich, abundant life. From the very beginning of time, God knew it wasn’t good for man to be alone.1 Enter Eve and marriage, but this divine truth also highlights man’s innate need for fellowship. We are social beings, and within us, no matter how deeply buried, is a ravenous hunger for companionship—for something deeper than the occasional hangout or quick chat in the hallway.
Like with any meaningful thing, friendship is also a bit dangerous. Opening yourself up to another human being, as genuine relationships require, carries the risk of hurt, rejection, and frustration. Even its absence can sting when a desire for friendship is not matched by a talent for finding—and keeping—it.
At the same time, friendship, in a sense, is a very casual thing. It begins because we live next to someone, sit at a certain table, have the same birthday month, share a vision or interest. Any number of simple circumstances can strike the match and spark a friendship that lasts a lifetime.
What we have, then, is a fun paradox. Friendship, like many of life’s particulars, is holy and simple, a wound and a balm, a risk and a reward. It’s the stuff of the deepest humanity, fraught with meaning and peril, which, of course, also makes it the stuff of great writing.
Some of the best stories I’ve read have the spirit of camaraderie as one of their central values. Frodo and Sam, plus the rest of the Fellowship.2 George and Lennie, albeit with a more somber conclusion.3 Even my favorite literary romance—that would be Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe in L.M. Montgomery’s delightful Anne of Green Gables series—begins with an honest, meaningful friendship after a few relational bumps and bruises (including a slate cracked over poor Gilbert’s head).
Though, there seems to be a slight lack of friendship in today’s literature. Perhaps I’ve simply not read widely enough, but it’s something C.S. Lewis bemoans in The Four Loves. Romance, he says, takes up ample space in modern literature while friendship is somewhat scarcer. This is especially unfortunate because Lewis also emphasizes its profound importance:
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (God did not need to create it). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”4
Like it gives value to our lives, friendship can surely give value to our writing, but only if we honestly engage with it. It’s more than a best-bud character who exists solely to provide comedic relief; conversely, it shouldn’t be treated too seriously lest it grow heavy and awkward. That said, we hope you enjoy navigating friendship’s paradoxical characteristics in this month’s writing prompt:
Write This:
Write a piece in your preferred format about friendship (and its many nuances).
Today’s piece is brought to you by Solum’s wonderful intern, Sarah Tate.
Genesis 2:18
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis, pg. 71
"Like with any meaningful thing, friendship is also a bit dangerous." I've never heard it described like that before, but that is so very true! Multiply that by a factor of ten for some situations such as friendship with a coworker who could have been a potential romantic partner under different circumstances. Then the tension between appropriate ethical boundaries, staying away from potential landmine situations, trying to be an authentic friend, etc., can seem overwhelming.