It is my observation that few persons have many friends. I think a fortunate person has perhaps three or four friends. This observation is at odds with the testimony of everyone. Everyone says they have many friends; and they do not mean superficial friends, they mean deep friends. Clearly, something is going on in social processes that let's people think they have many friends. I think the fundamental process shaping friendship is mobility. I mean geographical, residential, and social mobilities. People move so frequently from one home to another, from one location to another, and up and down the ladder of social classes, that they are continually meeting new persons and dropping out of touch with known persons. The average home owner moves once every seven years. The average renter moves annually. People move across town, across states, across continents. Children go from school grade and class to another grade and class. Adults take a new job and will devote much time to learning new faces and stories; then a few years later, another new job. As a result of this mobility, most of their friendships do not have opportunity to be tested. So perhaps we should distinguish between tested and untested friendship. When persons say they have many friendships, they mean without realizing it - I believe - untested friendships. When you get them to talk about their life histories, and study whom they know, how long they have known persons, and what they have done together, it turns out that they have few friendships whose active cultivation has lasted long enough to be tested and found true. So much of life is about convenience, convenience can fool us. Convenience can fool us into thinking that we are living in greater moral - social - spiritual depth than we are. I think that this is why married couples often identify their spouses as their best friends. A long running marriage has encountered and surmounted worlds of woe; if the marriage has produced children, it has been tested daily to the limits of endurance. A couple that freely maintains their relationship through such travail (and not to omit all that is wonderful in successfully loving and living with someone and raising children) thereby creates a bond that is, in a way, deeper than marriage itself. It is the bond of tested friendship.
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