Last week I went to a beloved friend’s 40th birthday, and I got to witness something I deeply believe about friendship distilled in one room.Sitting around a table full of mutual friends, screaming and laughing in a way that would usually be annoying, the subject of how everyone had become friends with the birthday boy came up. I’ll call him Ben.To my great pleasure, a lot of them said they had first met him through me. I don’t say this to brag about my skills as a friendship maker (although I am exemplary at it), but rather to express how completely stoked it made me. A warm feeling flooded my body (it could have been the beer). All I did was introduce them, and they did the rest, but nothing brings me more joy than connecting two people I love, who I know will love each other – and then watching the friendship take off.I’ve never understood guarding friends from others. Each friend augments the experience of being friends; each friend expands the friendship universe.I recently saw something CS Lewis wrote on the topic:
“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.”
