Pop-Philosophy: Define “Friend”

I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while now, retuning to it for more mulling every now and again. I’ve discussed it with a few people, but I’m really curious to see how my definition of the term “friend” compares to the rest of you.

So, the question is: What is a friend?

To begin, I must clarify that I have a certain, well, hierarchy of friendships. And by “hierarchy” I mean it’s like an Ogre, or an onion if you will. I haven’t ever been able to adequately explain it, so this will be a concerted effort to do so.

The outer surface is where general acquaintances are kept. This includes many coworkers, people from high school that I barely see anymore, folks from church that I hardly know, etc. For me, this would be hundreds and hundreds of people. Now that I think about it, there could be many layers of acquaintances – from those that I only know by name to those that I know a little bit better.

Next up, moving inward towards the center, would be associates. This represents the people that I talk to on a fairly regular basis. I probably know the name of their wife (or husband or BF/GF), how many kids they have, and perhaps a bit more. The people that I work with directly, for the most part, would go here, but there are people that I’ve met at the gym, or at church, or at choir practice that are also associates.

As a side note, I’ve decided that I really like the analogy that I’m using here. If you look at a cross-section of an onion, you’ll notice that the layers get thicker and thicker as you move toward the center. And, on top of that, the layers separate with greater ease around the outside than they do at the very center. Just a thought.

So the next group would be friends-of-friends. If you are a friend of one of my friends, that says enough about you to be this close to the core. I may not know you all that well, but we’ve probably hung out as a group before, and your name has probably come up in enough conversations that I probably know you better than you think.

If you’re my friend, you’ve probably been to my house, or I’ve been to yours, or we at least know where each other lives. We’ve probably sat and talked together for more than an hour on multiple occasions. I feel safe and entirely comfortable around you. Friends are people that I trust, and that I hope trust me. Friends are people that I care about – and while I’d like to point out that I don’t NOT care about the other people listed above, I’ll summarize by saying that care, in this sense, means that I think about their well-being and try to find ways to be helpful to them even when I’m not around them.

The layer of friends is quite small in my own life. Perhaps it is much larger for some of you, but I can barely manage to keep up with the limited few that I have now, and I don’t know that my brain can handle many more! These are also the people that get to be my “buds”, “pals”, “chums”, etc. For whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to entitle any others with those terms of endearment.

But even more exclusive than that is my best friends, the very core of my onion. These are the very few that really know “me” and are probably the only few, except for close relatives, that actually “get” me most of the time. These are the few that I have allowed into the inner sanctum of my life, and they are the people that I really start to miss if I don’t get to see or talk to them every few days. They can brighten my mood just by being there, even without acknowledging me. They are amazing. They are people that I would do ANYthing for, and at any time of day or night, and are probably the few that would return the favor.

Overall, I took my wacky, light-hearted topic of Pop-Philosophy and turned it into a sappy, self-reflective post. Why would I do this? Well, to be entirely honest, it’s because I’ve been frustrated with Facebook’s overuse of the term “friend”, and I keep declining friend requests from people that aren’t really my “friends” (see definition above). Frivilous? Sure. But oh well.

So… how about the rest of you? What do you think?