It gets more difficult to make friends as you get older. In school, spending hours with peers provided a bonding experience that often brought us together. When I had enough in common with someone, we’d probably end up being friends. But, once grade school is merely a memory, forming those bonds is a more difficult process.
Friendship is a beautiful thing. French writer Michel de Montaigne idealises friendship as giving so fully to the other so as you have nothing left to give. To him, friendship is such a totality that only the most lucky people may ever experience it. It is not a relationship formed out of chance or for one’s advantage, but because your souls are so united that you trust theirs more than your own. To achieve this, Montaigne encourages these friendships must be sought after.
Even in the past two years since graduating high school, I’ve noticed a change. The effort required to make friends is much higher. No more are the days of spending hours in the classroom, getting to know other people your age. No more are the days of shared hardship, gruelling over classwork. No more are the days of making it through school together. Everything is still so busy, so many responsibilities. But now, life has shifted further from a multi-player game to a single-player game with a tedious method of adding friends.
Making friends is more difficult as you get older, but life isn’t so blue. When Montaigne’s greatest friend died early, it nearly ruined him. It is probably the only reason he wrote his book, The Essays, as an outlet and remembrance. A friendship so close it must have been extraordinary. It was a friendship “so complete and perfect that its like has seldom been read of”.
I have a problem with Montaigne’s writing. Living in 1600’s France as a wealthy man, it would have been a simpler time. With life moving so fast now, we’re like a bear catching salmon in a rushing stream, snatching at whatever sense of affection we can get. Even just a glimmer, we better hang on for our dear lives. All we can do is try our hardest and hope for the best. As the words of Dylan Thomas insist:
“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”