My So-called Friends.

These past few years, I have been appreciating good friendships. I used to hoard friends, which I tried to compartmentalize in the past: those from High School, College, College Debate, College Newspaper, College Student Council, Law School, Law School newspaper, Law School Debate, first work, second work, current work, etc. Though lately, I have come to appreciate the landscape that my ’30s bring into the table, when hanging out or being seen with a posse of college model friends is no longer as appealing as it used to be.

The thing with growing up old is people tend to have shifting priorities. A good number of people have their own families or equally demanding jobs. A couple of them are in committed relationships, which somehow tend to obviate the impulse to keep in touch with other people. The sad fact is, inviting a larger number of group makes it even more difficult to schedule a common time. After everything has been said and done, it becomes a realization of how genuine connections are becoming more essential. Not to appear lugubrious, but at this point, I do love the handful of close friends that I have.

And only a handful they are. Excluding my Mom and Dad, I think I only have five really, really close friends. Those friends who know me inside out, without batting an eyelash or raising an eyebrow. Robin Dunbar, the British anthropologist, opined that we can only have an optimal amount of social relationships with respect to the processing abilities of our brains. He came up with a number—150—which refers to the limit of stable or meaningful relationships we can have at any given time.

And if I follow Dunbar and compare that with my Facebook friends, or the now defunct Friendster and MySpace, it would seem that I am probably ten to fifteen times more sociable than the average Joe. Then again, a good number of people who are my FB friends are just acquaintances I met at an event or party, or some former schoolmates whom I haven’t seen for decades.

In any case, this discussion of numbers is quite useless in trying to describe the unquantifiable. For instance, that length of time a friend listens to my inexcusable pauses while I collect my thoughts. Or the time in a very busy week where Gie bothers to call on certain hours, just to know how I feel at the moment and end up saying we should never lose the connection no matter what happens. The years together we can look back on, evidenced by “36-shot” non-digital photographs, high school eclectic fashion sense, birthday parties,  and travels out of the country that we have saved up for or swept clean our schedules just to make possible.

The years do matter for all of us. We had deep relationships that died deaths both natural and unnatural. Longevity thus becomes a litmus test for one’s capacity to love. There is something noble and magnanimous about a friendship (or any relationship, for that matter) that has lasted through personal difficulties, estrangements, betrayals, and distance.

Those are the relationships that are for keeps.