Ways To Think About Friendship

The Death of Julius Caesar, Vincenzo Camuccini, 1806

I work remotely most days, so I’ve made a point of making my apartment as pleasant a space as possible. For one, there are some attractive paintings on the walls. A couple of months ago, my brother visited and was inspecting the art, including the one you see above—the infamous scene of conspirators in the Roman Senate murdering Julius Caesar. They were people who he thought were his friends, so goes the story.

“Yes,” I said to him, “I like how it looks, and it serves as a reminder to be discerning in who you surround yourself with.”

“It’s funny how Caesar’s murder is always portrayed as some tragedy, as if he was this really good guy,” said my brother.

His remark made me laugh. It also made me consider an important truth about friendship: before you evaluate your friends, you should ask yourself if you’re like Caesar. Just as the tyrannical dictator should not have been surprised at a revolt, you should not expect to have good friends if you yourself are insufferable. That is like being a blind man on the road and complaining that everyone else is a bad driver.

Without a doubt, this is the most important aspect of how to think about friendship. To have good friends, be worthy of good friends. But what are some other useful mental models for friendship?

First off: don’t fool yourself. “It is better to be alone,” said George Washington, “than to be in bad company.” I agree. Solitude is a savior. Give me that Wanderer above the Sea of Fog energy all day. But this is only true to a certain point. Without quality friendship, you are like a plant deprived of sunlight and water. It takes tremendous delusion to convince yourself otherwise. The lone wolf mentality does more harm than good. We are social creatures.

Social creatures being social creatures, we have many different interactions and associations, some of which leave us feeling admiration, some of which leave us wondering how someone could possibly be so sketchy. Sometimes, however, a person’s character is not so clear. Deciding how close you should be with them is uncertain. I’ve come to the conclusion that the easiest way to clarify this is to ask yourself something simple: would I want this person around my child/future child? Like a knife sliding through warm butter, this question slices through any uncertainty you may have about the depth of friendship you should maintain with a person.

The reason this question is so effective is because it inevitably makes you consider a person’s values. Values are the foundation of genuine friendships. It seems to me that many friendships are not genuine, and exist just ‘cause. You just happened to play sports with them when you were younger or something like that. Just ‘cause friendships stem from an assumption that the people you have been friends with the longest are automatically your best friends. Perhaps they genuinely are, but this assumption neglects the reality of what quality friendships are based on. Shared values in a friendship don’t have to be elaborate. You don’t have to write out a set of rules like a legal contract. It can be very simple. You both like cheese and crackers. Hopefully more than that, actually. But you know what I mean.

But realizing that the foundation of a quality friendship is not necessarily time, but values, opens you up to something dangerous, something I call the old friends fallacy. What is it? In the personal development space online, you see a lot of people saying things like, “you need to cut off your old friends because they are holding you back,” stuff along those lines. Ok. Maybe. But maybe it doesn’t apply to you. It depends! It depends on your specific situation. And it depends on each specific person. And besides, in general, is there anything sweeter than laughing and reminiscing with old friends, as you unlock forgotten memories together? Is not one of the greatest parts of being alive enjoying the benefits of years of fun experiences compounding within a friendship?

For sure, there are cases where you do need to separate yourself from people you used to be friends with, for any number of reasons. If they don’t pass the “would you want them around your child/future child test,” or you guys just don’t have much in common anymore, then it doesn’t make sense to hang out. And that is fine. That’s natural. But often the whole “you need to cut off your old friends” thing seems perverse. If there is someone who is always telling you about how they have had to cut so many “toxic” people out of their lives, perhaps they are the toxic one, and it is only a matter of time before they start saying the same about you.

All of this is to say, you don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you’re saying “et tu, Brute?”