Friendship

Last Friday, at a wedding, I heard the most painful rendition of “That’s What Friends Are For” from the Jungle Book. The original is a really groovy number, and the voices that sing it in the movie are perfect. The voices at the wedding were adorable, but seemed completely unwilling to hit the right notes at the same speed or pitch! 😀

However unpleasant Friday’s performance was, it still reminded me of the value of friends who will make a fool of themselves to show everyone that they love you.

So here’s to friends and everything they are to us!

A bit repetitive, but beautiful nonetheless: Anais Nin:

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

C. S. Lewis:

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it’s one of those things that give value to survival.

Walt Whitman:

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.

Tehyi Hsich:

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what is made by the friends whom we choose.

And speaking of making our own world (through friendship or other): Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

If you treat an individual as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be. (Behandle die Menschen so, als wären sie, was sie sein sollten, und du hilfst ihnen zu werden, was sie sein können.)

Gillian Anderson bridges the gap between friendship and love:

Well, it seems to me that the best relationships – the ones that last – are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is… suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.

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