essay the true friendship

Emerson writes a poem about old friendships and about friendships lost.

A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes, The lover rooted stays. I fancied he was fled, And, after many a year, Glowed unexhausted kindliness Like daily sunrise there. My careful heart was free again, — O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through thee the rose is red, All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, And is the mill-round of our fate A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair.

W e have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.  Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth.

The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry, and in common speech, the emotions of benevolence and complacency which are felt towards others are likened to the material effects of fire; so swift, or much more swift, more active, more cheering, are these fine inward irradiations. From the highest degree of passionate love, to the lowest degree of good-will, they make the sweetness of life.

Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The scholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not furnish him with one good thought or happy expression; but it is necessary to write a letter to a friend, — and, forthwith, troops of gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words. See, in any house where virtue and self-respect abide, the palpitation which the approach of a stranger causes. A commended stranger is expected and announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain invades all the hearts of a household. His arrival almost brings fear to the good hearts that would welcome him. The house is dusted, all things fly into their places, the old coat is exchanged for the new, and they must get up a dinner if they can. Of a commended stranger, only the good report is told by others, only the good and new is heard by us. He stands to us for humanity. He is what we wish. Having imagined and invested him, we ask how we should stand related in conversation and action with such a man, and are uneasy with fear. The same idea exalts conversation with him. We talk better than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a richer memory, and our dumb devil has taken leave for the time. For long hours we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, so that they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at our unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger begins to intrude his partialities, his definitions, his defects, into the conversation, it is all over. He has heard the first, the last and best he will ever hear from us. He is no stranger now. Vulgarity, ignorance, misapprehension are old acquaintances. Now, when he comes, he may get the order, the dress, and the dinner, — but the throbbing of the heart, and the communications of the soul, no more.

What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which make a young world for me again? What so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling? How beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and the true! The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed; there is no winter, and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis, vanish, — all duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, — a possession for all time. Nor is nature so poor but she gives me this joy several times, and thus we weave social threads of our own, a new web of relations; and, as many thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, we shall by and by stand in a new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather not I, but the Deity in me and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many one. High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. These are new poetry of the first Bard, — poetry without stop, — hymn, ode, and epic, poetry still flowing, Apollo and the Muses chanting still. Will these, too, separate themselves from me again, or some of them? I know not, but I fear it not; for my relation to them is so pure, that we hold by simple affinity, and the Genius of my life being thus social, the same affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these men and women, wherever I may be.

I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It is almost dangerous to me to "crush the sweet poison of misused wine" of the affections. A new person is to me a great event, and hinders me from sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons which have given me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit. Thought is not born of it; my action is very little modified. I must feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine, — and a property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Every thing that is his, — his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments, — fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.

Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. The lover, beholding his maiden, half knows that she is not verily that which he worships; and in the golden hour of friendship, we are surprised with shades of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which he shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does not respect men as it respects itself. In strict science all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by mining for the metaphysical foundation of this Elysian temple? Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their appearance, though it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The root of the plant is not unsightly to science, though for chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. And I must hazard the production of the bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who stands united with his thought conceives magnificently of himself. He is conscious of a universal success, even though bought by uniform particular failures. No advantages, no powers, no gold or force, can be any match for him. I cannot choose but rely on my own poverty more than on your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness tantamount to mine. Only the star dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon-like ray. I hear what you say of the admirable parts and tried temper of the party you praise, but I see well that for all his purple cloaks I shall not like him, unless he is at last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny it, O friend, that the vast shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee also in its pied and painted immensity, — thee, also, compared with whom all else is shadow. Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is, — thou art not my soul, but a picture and effigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately, and already thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. Is it not that the soul puts forth friends as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the germination of new buds, extrudes the old leaf? The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society. This method betrays itself along the whole history of our personal relations. The instinct of affection revives the hope of union with our mates, and the returning sense of insulation recalls us from the chase. Thus every man passes his life in the search after friendship, and if he should record his true sentiment, he might write a letter like this to each new candidate for his love.

DEAR FRIEND: —

If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, I should never think again of trifles in relation to thy comings and goings. I am not very wise; my moods are quite attainable; and I respect thy genius; it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a delicious torment. Thine ever, or never.

Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and not for life. They are not to be indulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen. We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude.

I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no difference how many friends I have, and what content I can find in conversing with each, if there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from one contest, the joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I made my other friends my asylum.

The valiant warrior famoused for fight, After a hundred victories, once foiled, Is from the book of honor razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toiled."

Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and apathy are a tough husk, in which a delicate organization is protected from premature ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before any of the best souls were yet ripe enough to know and own it. Respect the naturlangsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in duration, in which Alps and Andes come and go as rainbows. The good spirit of our life has no heaven which is the price of rashness. Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man. Let us not have this childish luxury in our regards, but the austerest worth; let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foundations.

The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, and I leave, for the time, all account of subordinate social benefit, to speak of that select and sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, and which even leaves the language of love suspicious and common, so much is this purer, and nothing is so much divine.

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves? Not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which I draw from this alliance with my brother's soul, is the nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law! He who offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games, where the first-born of the world are the competitors. He proposes himself for contests where Time, Want, Danger, are in the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough in his constitution to preserve the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but all the speed in that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles. There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man, who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility, — requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holden to men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and trifle, but we can scarce believe that so much character can subsist in another as to draw us by love. Can another be so blessed, and we so pure, that we can offer him tenderness? When a man becomes dear to me, I have touched the goal of fortune. I find very little written directly to the heart of this matter in books. And yet I have one text which I cannot choose but remember. My author says, — "I offer myself faintly and bluntly to those whose I effectually am, and tender myself least to him to whom I am the most devoted." I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults over the moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub. We chide the citizen because he makes love a commodity. It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; it is good neighbourhood; it watches with the sick; it holds the pall at the funeral; and quite loses sight of the delicacies and nobility of the relation. But though we cannot find the god under this disguise of a sutler, yet, on the other hand, we cannot forgive the poet if he spins his thread too fine , and does not substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity, and pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers, to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle, and dinners at the best taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have experience. It is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps company with the sallies of the wit and the trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom, and unity. It should never fall into something usual and settled, but should be alert and inventive, and add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery.

Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and costly, each so well tempered and so happily adapted, and withal so circumstanced, (for even in that particular, a poet says, love demands that the parties be altogether paired,) that its satisfaction can very seldom be assured. It cannot subsist in its perfection, say some of those who are learned in this warm lore of the heart, betwixt more than two. I am not quite so strict in my terms, perhaps because I have never known so high a fellowship as others. I please my imagination more with a circle of godlike men and women variously related to each other, and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I find this law of one to one peremptory for conversation, which is the practice and consummation of friendship. Do not mix waters too much. The best mix as ill as good and bad. You shall have very useful and cheering discourse at several times with two several men, but let all three of you come together, and you shall not have one new and hearty word. Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort. In good company there is never such discourse between two, across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there present. No partialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may then speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, and not poorly limited to his own. Now this convention, which good sense demands, destroys the high freedom of great conversation, which requires an absolute running of two souls into one.

No two men but, being left alone with each other, enter into simpler relations. Yet it is affinity that determines which two shall converse. Unrelated men give little joy to each other; will never suspect the latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, as if it were a permanent property in some individuals. Conversation is an evanescent relation, — no more. A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.

Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine . I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.

He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who is sure that greatness and goodness are always economy; who is not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes. Let him not intermeddle with this. Leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of the eternal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course he has merits that are not yours, and that you cannot honor, if you must needs hold him close to your person. Stand aside; give those merits room; let them mount and expand. Are you the friend of your friend's buttons, or of his thought? To a great heart he will still be a stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground. Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead of the noblest benefit.

Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or know his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighbourly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to that standard. That great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near. To my friend I write a letter, and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you a little. It suffices me. It is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give, and of me to receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the annals of heroism have yet made good.

Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience for its opening. We must be our own before we can be another's. There is at least this satisfaction in crime, according to the Latin proverb; — you can speak to your accomplice on even terms. Crimen quos inquinat, aequat . To those whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. Yet the least defect of self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.

What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house. If unlike, his soul only flees the faster from you, and you shall never catch a true glance of his eye. We see the noble afar off, and they repel us; why should we intrude? Late, — very late, — we perceive that no arrangements, no introductions, no consuetudes or habits of society, would be of any avail to establish us in such relations with them as we desire, — but solely the uprise of nature in us to the same degree it is in them; then shall we meet as water with water; and if we should not meet them then, we shall not want them, for we are already they. In the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men. Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.

The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us, and which we can love. We may congratulate ourselves that the period of nonage, of follies, of blunders, and of shame, is passed in solitude, and when we are finished men, we shall grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little you gain the great. You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the world, — those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows merely.

It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if so we could lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of our popular views we make from insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, and though it seem to rob us of some joy, will repay us with a greater. Let us feel, if we will, the absolute insulation of man. We are sure that we have all in us. We go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we read books, in the instinctive faith that these will call it out and reveal us to ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such as we; the Europe an old faded garment of dead persons; the books their ghosts. Let us drop this idolatry. Let us give over this mendicancy. Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, 'Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more.' Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more our own? A friend is Janus-faced: he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend.

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them. We must have society on our own terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I cannot afford to speak much with my friend. If he is great, he makes me so great that I cannot descend to converse. In the great days, presentiments hover before me in the firmament. I ought then to dedicate myself to them. I go in that I may seize them, I go out that I may seize them. I fear only that I may lose them receding into the sky in which now they are only a patch of brighter light. Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my own. It would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or search of stars, and come down to warm sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the vanishing of my mighty gods. It is true, next week I shall have languid moods, when I can well afford to occupy myself with foreign objects; then I shall regret the lost literature of your mind, and wish you were by my side again. But if you come, perhaps you will fill my mind only with new visions, not with yourself but with your lustres, and I shall not be able any more than now to converse with you. So I will owe to my friends this evanescent intercourse. I will receive from them, not what they have, but what they are. They shall give me that which properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. But they shall not hold me by any relations less subtile and pure. We will meet as though we met not, and part as though we parted not.

It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and, no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer. Yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify both.

Ralph Waldo Emerson left the ministry to pursue a career in writing and public speaking. Emerson became one of America's best known and best-loved 19th-century figures. More About Emerson

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The Evolution of True Friendship

Some interesting implications of our evolved friendship detectors..

Posted September 12, 2017

St. Thomas Aquinas famously mused, “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship .” I recently came across this quote, and it seemed like an easy statement to agree with. But the more I thought about true friendship , the less I felt like I understood.

So I did what any scholar of human nature would do and continued to scroll through quotes on the internet. One idea kept popping up: true friends are around when times are tough. “Friends show their love in times of trouble and not happiness ,” wrote Greek philosopher Euripides. “A real friend walks in when the rest of the world walks out,” quipped radio host Walter Winchel. And I even found this gem, attributed to the sometimes brilliant Justin Bieber: “friends are the best to turn to when you’re having a rough day.”

I went bleary-eyed reading pages of quotes like these, which usually means that the nugget of wisdom isn’t a particularly deep insight into human behavior. Of course we want our friends to be around when times are tough. That’s what friends are for! But why ? Why do we place such emphasis on our friends being there during tough times? This seemingly simple question is actually part of a deep evolutionary puzzle.

The puzzle starts with acknowledging that friendships exist because two people can benefit from the relationship. It makes us uncomfortable to think of our friends in these terms, as people who can benefit us (e.g., “ my friendships aren’t about what I get in return”). But let’s be honest, if you aren’t getting some benefit from your friends, you should probably get some new friends.

The real problem with the quid-pro-quo of friendship isn’t that it’s distasteful, it’s that it sets up a nasty paradox: we most need our friends’ help when we are least likely to repay them. In other words, when we are, sick, sad, or broke—that’s when we really need our friends—but being in such a sorry state means that we’re least capable of returning the favor. This creates the unfortunate incentive for our friends to abandon us when our need is greatest. And this happens. We call them fair-weather friends: people who disappear when we get sick, depressed , or lose our jobs, and then reappear when we’re back to normal. But as horrible as fair-weather friendship seems, from an evolutionary perspective, the real question is: Why aren’t all friends fair-weather friends? This is exactly how it works among other animals; a deer running from a predator doesn’t double back to help a friend. So what’s so different about human friendship?

The solution to the paradox, of course, is that true friends don’t abandon us in times of need because they know that when we return to health, happiness, or gainful employment, we will repay them the favor. This is a valuable arrangement to have, but the important thing to recognize is that true friendship wasn’t inevitable. It could have been otherwise, and a number of key pieces of human psychology had to evolve before true friendship could exist in its current form. Specifically, the biggest thing our species needed was a way to separate fair-weather friends from true friends. How do we do this?

In the same way that our eyes evolved to be sensitive to salient cues in our environment, our friendship detectors have evolved to be particularly sensitive to salient cues about whether our friends will abandon us in times of need. This isn’t to say that our friendship detectors only focus on being abandoned in tough times; we choose our friends based on many different characteristics, like who devotes the most time to us, who adds the most happiness to our lives, and who is the kindest, the funniest, or the best looking. But the point is that there was intense evolutionary pressure not to be abandoned in tough times, and this has a profound effect on how human friendship works.

Here are three of the most interesting consequences of our evolved friendship detectors:

1. Indebted to Those Who Help Us in Times of Need. The most obvious consequence is that we feel indebted to those who help us during tough times. We know this, of course, but consider how extreme we are in this regard. We all know people who are in friendships that are otherwise not very healthy, but they remain in them because said friend helped them at some critical juncture (e.g., “Liz was there for me when on one else was.”). We can also do hundreds of nice things for a happy friend, but all is forgotten when we drop the ball on a sad friend. This behavior only makes sense if we recognize that our friendship detectors are especially tuned to make sure we’re not abandoned at the worst possible time. In sum—for better and for worse—the strength of our friendships is often less about the total amount of happiness we add to our friends’ lives, and more about whether we were there for them in specific times of need.

2. Seeking Friends Who Think We Are Unique. Have you ever noticed how our friends really appreciate the skills we have but they do not (e.g., “Gertrude is so great, she’s such an amazing DJ, our parties would suck without her,” “Greg does such an awesome job planning our vacations—what would we do without him?” etc.). At first, it seems obvious why our friends would notice our unique traits—they are right there on display for anyone to see—but the hidden evolutionary logic of our friendship detector suggests another reason: perhaps we choose our friends in the first place based on who is most likely to appreciate our uniqueness. Why? This is exactly the strategy one would adopt to minimize the risk that our friends would ditch us in times of need. If we pick friends who value our unique traits, then we are hard to replace (or so they think), and so our friends are more likely to be there for us when it counts. In sum, no friendship is unconditional and when it comes time to ask for help, it’s better to be irreplaceable, and so we evolved to make friends with people who view us as unique.

3. The Difficulty of Modern Friendships. This implication is more speculative, but the nature of our friendship detectors might also help explain why so many people find it difficult to form close friendships. We are all living longer, healthier, and safer lives than at any time in recorded history, and this is a good thing, but it also means that many of our friendships have never been tested. Indeed, to know who really has your back, there needs to be some diagnostic event that separates true friends from fair-weather friends. We’ve all struggled at points in our lives, but modern friendships more often involve going to the mall than summiting Everest, exploring a harsh new frontier, or going to war. In sum, it takes a watershed event to separate true friends from fair weather friends, but these events are rare and so many of our friendships remain in true friendship limbo.

It might seem odd to take an evolutionary perspective on a question like true friendship. After all, friendships are a matter of personal taste, they change over the lifespan, and vary across cultures. But if there is one enduring truth about friendship, it’s that we want our friends to be there in times of need. This seems obvious to us, but it’s interesting to think that it could have been otherwise. It could have been that we judge our friends by who spends the most time with us, or who brings joy to our lives most often. Or it could have been that all friendships were fair-weather friendships that we ended as soon as we stopped getting proportional returns.

But our model of friendship is different. We give our friends our bottom dollar, put our lives on hold to visit when they are sick, and forget our own problems to help them with theirs. And because this is how friendship works, it has a number of consequences, including making us constantly on alert for possible signals of abandonment in times of need, motivating us to make friends with those who value our unique traits, and sometimes feeling uncertain about who are true friends really are. All this is part of the hidden evolutionary logic of true friendship.

Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1996). Friendship and the Banker’s Paradox: Other pathways to the evolution of adaptations for altruism. In W. G. Runciman, J. Maynard Smith, & R. I. M. Dunbar (Eds.), Evolution of Social Behaviour Patterns in Primates and Man. Proceedings of the British Academy, 88, 119-143.

Gus Cooney is a social psychologist at Harvard University who researches social interaction, decision-making, and happiness.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

The primary topic of Emerson ’s essay is, as the title suggests, the nature of friendship. Emerson takes pains to differentiate true friendship from more superficial kinds of human relationships. In “Friendship,” Emerson emphasizes that meaningful friendship can neither be forced nor shallow. Instead, true friendship emerges by chance, when two compatible individuals form a relationship in which they can be entirely honest and authentic with each other, and through which they can bring meaning and dignity into one another’s lives.

Emerson insists that friends are encountered, not made. Who can and cannot become friends has nothing to do with the will or desire to form a connection, but with qualities inherent in both individuals. Emerson writes that “My friends have come to me unsought.” “The great God” gives them; Emerson does not intentionally make friends. Hence it is the “Deity” in Emerson and in his friend that “cancels the thick walls of individual character relation, age, sex, circumstance” and unites them. Friends are “self-elected,” rather than chosen, in that, regardless of how much one wants to befriend them, the potential friend must carry within him or her the “Deity.” A friend therefore cannot be intentionally made. Indeed, most efforts to form friendships are failures. Most normal friendships “hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fiber of the human heart.” That is to say, people often choose friends for superficial reasons—like pleasure or fame—and not because of a real connection.  Normally people “snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God,” and instead of matching with an equal, “Almost all people descend to meet” in such a way that the “flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other.” Instead of actively seeking to make friends, therefore, Emerson merely remains open to the chance that he might encounter a true friend as he moves through the world. The result is that every encounter is potentially life-changing, because friendship is determined by divine forces beyond human knowledge and control.

Emerson notes that people change when they enter “actual society,” altering their thought and action to suit those around them.  But a precondition for friendship is that each individual be fully independent. Friendship is, in a way, a kind of solitary coexistence. Emerson writes that “There must be very two, before there can be very one.” That is, friendship only occurs between two entirely independent individuals who respect and even fear one another, but nonetheless recognize the “deep identity”—the shared presence of the Deity—that unites them. One is “real and equal” with such a true friend, rather than dishonest or hypocritical, as people can easily become when they are in the company of people to whom they lack a meaningful connection. With a true friend, Emerson writes, “I may think aloud.” A true friend is someone with whom one can be entirely sincere, unfiltered, and natural—just as one would be in solitude. In addition to being sincere, a true friend is someone with whom one shares “tenderness,” a kind of basic human connection that is simple and solid.

True friendship is not solely defined by being able to share the intimate details of one’s day-to-day life with another person—friends instead dignify one another’s lives by forming a community based on a more profound human connection. The path to friendship is not through visiting a friend’s house or getting to know his or her family. Emerson asks, rhetorically, “Are you the friend of your friend’s buttons, or of his thought?” Instead, friendships emerges in conversation and through letters, which reveals a friend’s soul, rather than the superficial trappings of his or her life. That said, friendship does not consist of fancy or fine things, either, such as banquet dinners or dancing or other forms of merriment. It may occur in a very “strict and homely” form, and in people from unexpected classes of society. Instead of being something that one practices now and then, true friendship lasts and affects “all the relations and passages of life and death.” Friends, whether they are present in person or only in one’s mind, “dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man’s life,” and through the pleasure of true human connection, “add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery” through conversation and sympathy. Rather than merely serving as a shallow companion or a listening ear, a true friend actively improves and enriches an individual’s life.

True friendship, according to Emerson, fundamentally changes a person’s life in some ways, but does not change it at all in others. If friendship occurs between two “formidable natures,” who both harbor the “Deity” and respect one another, friendship can remake the world of each person, enhancing the mundane and solitary experience of life, and dignifying “drudgery” through conversation, reflection, and a sense of deep, but not overly intimate, community. At the same time, however, friendship requires that each person be independent, and behave with the other as he or she would act, think, and feel) in solitude. The paradoxical result is that true friendship emerges when two people are essentially alone together, living independently alongside one another.

True Friendship ThemeTracker

True Friendship Quotes in Friendship

A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes, The lover rooted stays. I fancied he was fled, And, after many a year, Glowed unexhausted kingliness Like daily sunrise there. My careful heart was free again,— O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through thee the rose is red, All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, And is the mill-round of our fate A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair.

My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather not I, but the Deity in me and in them divides and cancels the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many, one.

I cannot deny it, O friend, that the vast shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee also in its pied and painted immensity,—thee, also, compared with whom all else is shadow. Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is,—thou art not my soul, but a picture and effigy of that.

Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fiber of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen....Almost all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worse, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and the gifted!

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth, as having none about it to court or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine . I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.

Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course he has merits that are not yours, and that you cannot honor, if you must needs hold him close to your person. Stand aside; give those merits room; let them mount and expand. Are you the friend of your friend’s buttons, or of his thought? To a great heart he will still be a stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground. Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead of the noblest benefit.

Let him be to thee forever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near. To my friend I write a letter, and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you a little. It suffices me. It is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give, and of me to receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the annals of heroism have yet made good.

The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and gables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us, and which we can love.

The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify both.

127 Friendship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

When you have a good friendship topic, essay writing becomes as easy as it gets. We have some for you!

📝 Friendship Essay Structure

🏆 best friendship topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 good essay topics on friendship, 🎓 simple & easy friendship essay titles, 📌 most interesting friendship topics to write about, ❓ research questions about friendship.

Describing a friend, talking about your relationship and life experiences can be quite fun! So, take a look at our topics on friendship in the list below. Our experts have gathered numerous ideas that can be extremely helpful for you. And don’t forget to check our friendship essay examples via the links.

Writing a friendship essay is an excellent way to reflect on your relationships with other people, show your appreciation for your friends, and explore what friendship means to you. What you include in your paper is entirely up to you, but this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t structure it properly. Here is our advice on structuring an essay on friendship:

• Begin by selecting the right topic. It should be focused and creative so that you can earn a high mark. Think about what friendship means to you and write down your thoughts. Reflect on your relationship with your best friend and see if you can write an essay that incorporates these themes. If these steps didn’t help – don’t worry! Fortunately, there are many web resources that can help you choose. Browse samples of friendship essays online to see if there are any topics that interest you.
• Create a title that reflects your focus. Paper titles are important because they grasp the reader’s attention and make them want to read further. However, many people find it challenging to name their work, so you can search for friendship essay titles online if you need to.
• Once you get the first two steps right, you can start developing the structure of your essay. An outline is a great tool because it presents your ideas in a clear and concise manner and ensures that there are no gaps or irrelevant points. The most basic essay outline has three components: introduction, body, and conclusion. Type these out and move to the next step. Compose an introduction. Your introduction should include a hook, some background information, and a thesis. A friendship essay hook is the first sentence in the introduction, where you draw the reader’s attention. For instance, if you are creating an essay on value of friendship, include a brief description of a situation where your friends helped you or something else that comes to mind. A hook should make the reader want to read the rest of the essay. After the hook, include some background information on your chosen theme and write down a thesis. A thesis statement is the final sentence of the first paragraph that consists of your main argument.
• Write well-structured body paragraphs. Each body paragraph should start with one key point, which is then developed through examples, references to resources, or other content. Make sure that each of the key points relates to your thesis. It might be useful to write out all of your key points first before you write the main body of the paper. This will help you to see if any of them are irrelevant or need to be swapped to establish a logical sequence. If you are composing an essay on the importance of friendship, each point should show how a good friend can make life better and more enjoyable. End each paragraph with a concluding sentence that links it to the next part of the paper.
• Finally, compose a conclusion. A friendship essay conclusion should tie together all your points and show how they support your thesis. For this purpose, you should restate your thesis statement at the beginning of the final paragraph. This will offer your reader a nice, well-balanced closure, leaving a good impression of your work.

We hope that this post has assisted you in understanding the basic structure of a friendship paper. Don’t forget to browse our website for sample papers, essay titles, and other resources!

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A friendship essay is precisely what it sounds like: a paper that students write to describe their relationships with their mates.  It is among the many assignments that students are given in their college institutions.  Writing essays about friendship is a great way to analyze what the connection means to you and reflect on some of your encounters. It can also be used as a tool to improve your closeness and affection. This blog post offers tips you may consider while writing your paper and its outline. It features friendship essay examples that help generate ideas that form the primary focus of your paper.  If you are not ready to waste your time on essay writing, StudyCrumb is here to offer affordable prices and professional writers.

What Is a Friendship Essay?

The definition of friendship essay is quite clear and straightforward. A paper about friends can be described as a write-up on a relationship between two or more people. This interpretation makes it easier to obtain the meaning of friendship essay.  Writing such thematic essay will help you communicate your feelings as well as your thoughts. It allows you to recollect your memories about different encounters you have had in life. It will also help you evaluate qualities of your connection.  While writing, you may have a sequence of events starting from your meet-up, activities you have done together, and how you have sustained the connection. Preparing an essay about friendship can evoke memories from your past that may have been long forgotten.

Purpose of an Essay on Friendship

This kind of essay aims to help you explore its nature and form, its pros and cons, and its role in your life. The importance of friendship essay is that it acts as a reflective tool. It helps you realize the significance of creating and maintaining good relationships with friends. It also explains how these connections contribute to your overall wellness. In addition, an article about friendship may teach you to understand that true friendship is priceless and should stand the test of time.

Ideas to Write a Friendship Essay on

Writing essays about friendship is a more manageable task than drafting a paper about a topic that may require more detailed research. Any excellent essay about true friendship starts with an idea that you can examine.  Below are some unique ideas you can explore:

• What is friendship?
• What does friendship mean to me?
• The value of friendship you cherish in your life.
• Cross-cultural friendships.
• The role of friendship in mental health maintenance.

As you reflect on your relationship with your friend, see if you can write a paper incorporating these themes. Remember to choose an idea that interests you and is relevant to your personal experiences or research. Be sure to support your arguments with evidence and examples from real-life situations, literature, or academic research. Look through our definition essay topics or persuasive essay ideas to find a theme that suits your task best.

Friendship Essay Outline

An essay outline about friendship is a summary of what your write-up will contain but in a less detailed format. You use it to organize and structure your content logically and effectively. It presents the main topics and subtopics hierarchically, allowing writers to see the connection between different parts of the material. The importance of an outline lies in its ability to help writers plan, organize, as well as clarify their ideas. This makes the writing of an essay about friends more efficient, and the final product is more coherent and effective. Here is an example of an outline for a friendship essay.

• Briefly introduce the topic of friendship
• Provide a thesis statement that summarizes the main points of the essay
• Topic sentence
• Your main argument
• Real-life examples that support your key idea
• Supporting evidence
• 3rd Body Paragraph
• Examples or recommendations
• Summarize the main points
• Provide some food for thought

Note that this is a general outline. The exact structure and content of your essay will depend on the specific requirements of your assignment and your personal interests.

Structure of a Friendship Essay

The structure of an essay on friendship typically includes the following three parts.

• Introduction An introduction should grab the reader's attention and provide background information. It should also include a clear thesis statement that sets a path and direction of the friendship essays.
• Body The essay's body is where you will provide evidence and details to underpin your thesis statement. It should consist of several paragraphs supporting and developing a statement of purpose. Each paragraph should focus on a specific aspect of your friendliness, such as its importance, benefits, or challenges.
• Conclusion Briefly summarize the essay's main points and reinforce your principal argument. The conclusion should leave a lasting impression on readers and emphasize your topic's significance. Overall, the structure should be clear and well-organized, allowing the audience to follow your argument and understand the topic's significance.

Friendship Essay Introduction

A good introduction about friendship essay should grab the reader's attention and encourage them to continue reading. This can be achieved through a " hook ," a quote, an interesting fact, or a thought-provoking question. Background information can then be provided to give context to the discussed topic.  The introduction to an essay about friendship should also clearly state your main point or argument of the piece, known as thesis statement. This sets pace for the rest of the paper and gives readers a clear view of what to expect. A friendship essay introduction should be concise, engaging, and provide context for the audience to understand the content fully.

Friendship Essay Introduction Example

Here is an example of a friendship essay introduction that sets the stage for a reflective and thought-provoking exploration of the most precious gift in life.

Friendship Essay Thesis Statement

The friendship thesis statement aims to provide a summary of the essay's main point. It can be one or two sentences which you develop as you research. The statement of purpose should focus on the central argument and be supported by evidence presented in the body. The thesis statement about friendship should guide the essay's structure. Its main objective is to provide your reader with a roadmap to follow. It should be specific, concise, and accurately reflect the content in your paper. Understanding what constitutes a strong thesis is crucial for writers as it is integral to every essay writing process.

Friendship Thesis Statement Example

The thesis statement must be clear to readers so that they may quickly recognize it and comprehend the paper's significance. It should act as a blueprint of what to expect. A friendship thesis statement sample could be:

Friendship Essay Body

The body part should include five or more paragraphs. Students will use body paragraphs to elaborate on the key factors that make their connection special.

• Definition and explanation. This friendship body paragraph should start with a definition and a brief explanation of its characteristics and qualities.
• Importance of friends. Discuss why it is vital in your life and how it contributes to personal growth and welfare.
• Types of friendships. A paragraph about friendship should discuss different types of friend's relationships that exist.
• Qualities of a good friend. Discuss standards a great confidant should possess.
• Challenges. Discuss the common problems that friends face.
• Ways to strengthen friendship. Provide tips on reinforcing and maintaining good relationships.
• Conclusion. Sum up the key points made in your essay and reiterate the importance of genuine bonds in life.

Friendship Body Paragraph Example

Below is a friendship body paragraph sample.

Friendship Essay Conclusion

Any conclusion on a friendship essay should sum up the main ideas discussed in your essay and restate the thesis statement. It should leave a lasting impression and provide a closure to your topic. To start writing a conclusion about a friendship essay, commence by rephrasing the thesis statement in different words. Summarize the points discussed in your essay by connecting them back to your statement of purpose. End conclusion with a final thought or call to action that leaves a lasting impression on your reader.  It is vital to keep it concise yet impactful. Avoid introducing new information or arguments, as it can confuse readers. Instead, focus on tying up loose ends and emphasizing main ideas discussed in your essay.

Friendship Essay Conclusion Sample

Here is an example of a friendship essay conclusion:

How to Write an Essay on Friendship?

To write an essay about friendship, start by brainstorming ideas about what friends mean to you and the benefits of such kinds of relationships. Knowing how to write a good essay about friendship involves selecting a great topic and arranging your content in a manner that has logical flow.

1. Come Up With a Topic About Friendship

To brainstorm essay topics on friendship, consider the following.

• Reflect on your own experiences. Think about your own bonds and encounters you have had with allies. Avoid bad occurrences. This can inspire topics to explore in your essay. To find a subject that interests you, you can also look through internet examples of friend essays.
• Ask questions related to friends, such as "What makes a meaningful connection?" or "How does the quality of your bond change over time?"
• Talk to others. Ask friends, family, or classmates about their experiences. They may have interesting insights that can inspire new topics for your essay.

Ensure that topic you select is appropriate for your report style. For example: 

You can start this topic by how you met, narrate your story, and then pick out some attributes of a good friend and the advantages of the relationship. Remember to choose a topic on friendship essay that you feel passionate about and can explore in depth in your essay.

2. Do Research

To research and collect information for the friend essay, follow these steps.

• Start with a general search. Use search engines like Google to find articles, books, and other resources on affection.
• Identify keywords. Determine the most relevant keywords for your essay, such as "essay about a friend." Use them in your search to narrow down results to the most pertinent information.
• Evaluate sources. When you have a list of potential sources, evaluate each to determine their credibility and relevance. Look for sources that are written by experts in the field and that have been peer-reviewed or published in reputable journals.
• Take notes. As you read, take notes on the most important and relevant information.

3. Develop a Friendship Essay Outline

An outline is a useful tool for organizing ideas in an essay and it ensures that your essay has a structure. Before outlining you need to have a clear vision of what your essay will focus on. Then analyze every piece of information that you have and categorize it into headings. An outline of an essay about friendships will comprise a list which consists of each paragraph’s topic sentence . By going through the outline, you are able to examine what purpose each paragraph serves. If you need assistance on how to create an outline for a college essay about friendship use the outline example shown below.

4. Write an Essay on Friendship

Writing an essay about friendship is an exciting task. Below is a sample of how you can write your friendship essay. Friendship is the bond between two or more individuals based on mutual trust, support, and understanding. This connection can develop at any stage of life and even last a lifetime. It is a bond that fills our lives with comfort, laughter, and advice during a hard period. Many different factors can contribute to its formation and success. Having similar needs, mutual interests, and social activities can help sustain the relationship. Another crucial aspect is being ready to support each other through happy and difficult times unconditionally. Trust is also an essential component in the longevity of this connection. In conclusion, friendship is an invaluable treasure that brings joy, comfort, and support to our lives. It provides a safe place in a world that can be harsh and unforgiving. It reminds us that we should always stay true to each other.

5. Proofread Your Friendship Essay

When writing a friendship essay, consider the following for an effective introduction.

• Grab your reader's attention. A good introduction makes them want to continue reading your friendship essay.
• Provide context. Give an overview of the friendship essay and its purpose. This will make readers interested in your work.
• Establish your purpose. Clearly state the main idea or thesis.
• Preview the main points. Briefly summarize key points that will be covered.
• Be concise. An introduction should be short and on point, generally no more than one or two paragraphs.

Remember, your introduction will set tone for the rest of your piece and should encourage your readers to continue reading.

Friendship Essay Examples

A sample essay about friendship can be critical to students, especially when they are researching and collecting information. Free friendship essays help you get ideas on how to write and structure your essay. Below are essay examples about friendship that you can go through to help with your writing and draw inspiration from. Friendship essay example 1

Friendship essay example 2

Essay about friendship sample 3

Example of essay on friendship 4

Friendship Essay Writing Tips

Here are some extra tips you need to know that will motivate you to write a friendship short essay.

• You could start with a quote, an anecdote, or a surprising fact.
• Use examples from your own life to illustrate your points in your school college essay about friendship, as this will make your essay more relatable and interesting to read.
• Friendship titles for essays should be clear and straightforward. They should also reflect your main points.
• Describe the aspect of the bond that, in your opinion, is most crucial. It is possible to personalize something that means an entirely different thing to various individuals.

Bottom Line on Friendship Essay Writing

Your central task is to understand what is a friendship essay even before you start writing. Friendship essays explore the nature of our relationships and their various aspects. They can take various forms, from short reflective essays to longer, more analytical pieces. These papers can discuss qualities that make a good friend, the benefits of your relationship, or challenges of maintaining close relationships. Examples of short essays about friendship could be a personal reflection, exploring the unique bond between the writer and their friend and what they hope to continue gaining from each other when they cross paths in future. If you struggle with other papers, feel free to check out our writing guides. From an essay about bullying to a world peace essay , we’ve got you covered.

FAQ About Friendship Essay

1. may i use friendship quotes for the essay.

Yes, it is always a winning step. You can write an essay on friendship with quotes either as the title of your essay or as an introductory phrase. You can also include it in the body of your work while narrating your story.

2. How to write a hook for an essay of friendship?

An essay should hook your reader's attention and make them want to read your story. When writing essays about friendship, you can describe a unique situation in which your friends helped you. You can also end your introduction with a catchy quote, such as Squad goals! Some other quotes that you can use include:

• A road to a friend's house is never long.
• Count your age with friends and years.
• True friend is seen through the heart, not through the eyes.

3. Explain the importance of friendship essay.

The importance of friendship essay is that it teaches students to express their thoughts and feelings about confidants and benefits they obtain from this connection. It also acts as a reflective tool. Friend essays also help students realize advantages of creating and maintaining good relationships with friends and how these linkages contribute to your overall wellness and welfare.

Daniel Howard is an Essay Writing guru. He helps students create essays that will strike a chord with the readers.

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Read more: How to Start off an Essay

Friendship is a special bond that unites two individuals with common interests, experiences, and emotions. It makes life easier and contributes to our happiness. It is a relationship that transcends race, religion, and socio-economic status and has power to sustain and uplift the spirit of humans. In this essay, I will explore its benefits and how it can contribute to a better world. Through personal anecdotes, I will illustrate the bond's depth and role in our day-to-day lives.

In this essay, I will explore friendship's meaning, its importance, benefits, drawbacks, and how it can contribute to a better world. Through a series of personal anecdotes, I will illustrate the bond's depth and its key role in our lives.

How to Spend Free Time with Friends • Outdoor Activities. Spending time in nature is a great way to bond with friends. You can meet, then go for a hike, take a walk, or go to a picnic in a park. This allows you to connect and enjoy the beautiful world around you. • Movie Night. Watching a movie is another fun activity you can do with friends. You can share popcorn, grab snacks, and enjoy a movie together. This is a great way to relax and unwind. • Board Games. Playing board games with friends is a fun and interactive way to spend free time. You can play classic games like Monopoly. This is a great way to challenge each other and have a good time.

Read more: How to Conclude an Essay

In conclusion, friendship is an essential aspect of our lives that brings joy, support, and companionship. It is a relationship built on mutual trust, understanding, and love. A true friend will always be there for you, no matter what. As humans, we need sincere friends to help us navigate life's ups and downs and provide emotional support. An understanding friend can withstand any obstacle and bring happiness to our lives. The connection is meant to last a lifetime, whether through shared experiences, interests, or simply a common bond. Ultimately, having a close group of loyal friends who truly care for us is one of the greatest gifts we can receive in life.

The Day my Best Friend Changed My Life.

Read more: Essay About Happiness : Tips & Examples

Essay on Friendship

Here we have shared the Essay on Friendship in detail so you can use it in your exam or assignment of 150, 250, 400, 500, or 1000 words.

You can use this Essay on Friendship in any assignment or project whether you are in school (class 10th or 12th), college, or preparing for answer writing in competitive exams. 

Topics covered in this article.

Essay on Friendship in 150 words

Essay on friendship in 250-300 words, essay on friendship in 500-1000 words.

Friendship is a cherished bond that brings joy, support, and companionship into our lives. It is based on trust, understanding, and shared experiences. True friends offer comfort and a sense of belonging.

Friends play a significant role in our lives. They celebrate our successes, provide support during tough times, and make our journey more enjoyable. Through friendships, we learn, grow, and gain new perspectives. Friends inspire us and motivate us to become better versions of ourselves.

Maintaining friendships requires effort and commitment. It involves mutual respect, trust, and open communication. Quality time spent together strengthens the bond.

In a fast-paced world, friendships are invaluable. They offer love, acceptance, and understanding. True friends stand by us, providing support and making life more meaningful.

In conclusion, friendship is a precious gift that enriches our lives. It brings happiness, support, and a sense of belonging. Nurturing and cherishing friendships is essential for our well-being and happiness.

Friendship is a beautiful bond that brings joy, support, and companionship into our lives. It is a connection built on trust, mutual understanding, and shared experiences. True friendship goes beyond superficial interactions and offers a deep sense of comfort and belonging.

Friends play a significant role in our lives. They are there to celebrate our successes, lend a listening ear during challenging times, and provide a support system that helps us navigate the ups and downs of life. Friends bring laughter, happiness, and emotional support, making our journey more enjoyable and meaningful.

Friendship also allows us to learn and grow. Through our interactions with friends, we gain new perspectives, broaden our horizons, and develop important life skills such as empathy, communication, and compromise. Friends inspire us to be better versions of ourselves and provide a sense of motivation and encouragement.

Maintaining and nurturing friendships require effort and commitment. It involves mutual respect, trust, and open communication. Spending quality time together, sharing experiences, and being there for each other strengthens the bond of friendship.

In a fast-paced and often lonely world, friendships are invaluable. They provide a sense of belonging, happiness, and a support network that enriches our lives. True friends stand by us through thick and thin, offering love, acceptance, and understanding. They are the pillars of support who make life’s journey more meaningful and enjoyable.

In conclusion, friendship is a precious gift that adds immense value to our lives. It is a connection built on trust, understanding, and shared experiences. Friends offer support, laughter, and companionship, making our lives more fulfilling. Nurturing and cherishing friendships is essential for our well-being and happiness.

Title: Friendship – The Essence of True Connection

Introduction:

Friendship is a unique and valuable bond that enriches our lives with joy, support, and companionship. It is a connection that goes beyond mere acquaintanceship, rooted in trust, understanding, and shared experiences. This essay explores the significance of friendship, its qualities, the benefits it brings, and the ways to nurture and cherish these precious relationships.

The Meaning of Friendship

Friendship is a deep and meaningful relationship between individuals characterized by mutual affection, trust, and empathy. It is a bond that offers companionship, understanding, and support in both good times and bad. True friendship is built on honesty, respect, and genuine care for one another.

Qualities of True Friendship

True friendships possess several key qualities. Trust is paramount, as friends confide in each other without fear of judgment or betrayal. Mutual understanding allows friends to empathize and provide emotional support. Respect is essential, as friends accept and appreciate each other’s individuality. Loyalty ensures that friends stand by one another through thick and thin. Communication is vital for maintaining open and honest dialogue, fostering a strong and lasting connection.

Benefits of Friendship

Friendship brings numerous benefits to our lives. Emotional support from friends helps us cope with challenges, reduces stress, and boosts our mental well-being. Friends offer a safe space for sharing thoughts, feelings, and experiences, providing a sense of comfort and validation. They provide a support network during difficult times, lending a listening ear and offering guidance. Friends also bring joy, laughter, and fun into our lives, creating cherished memories and experiences.

Nurturing and Cherishing Friendships

To foster and maintain strong friendships, it is essential to invest time and effort. Regular communication and quality time spent together strengthen the bond. Active listening and empathy are crucial, allowing friends to truly understand and support one another. Celebrating each other’s successes and offering support during challenges cultivates a sense of solidarity. Honesty and transparency build trust, ensuring a foundation of authenticity in the relationship. Respecting boundaries and accepting differences helps sustain harmony within friendships.

The Role of Friendship in Personal Growth

Friendship plays a significant role in personal growth and development. Friends offer different perspectives, expanding our horizons and challenging our beliefs. They provide constructive feedback, helping us improve and grow as individuals. Through shared experiences, we learn valuable life lessons and acquire new skills. Friends inspire us to pursue our passions, push our boundaries, and achieve our goals. Their support and encouragement fuel our motivation and self-confidence.

Types of Friendship

Friendships come in various forms, ranging from childhood friends to work colleagues, from online companions to lifelong confidants. Each type of friendship brings unique dynamics and contributes to our personal growth and well-being.

Conclusion :

Friendship is a precious and invaluable connection that enhances our lives in countless ways. It offers companionship, support, and a sense of belonging. True friends stand by us through thick and thin, celebrating our successes and providing comfort during difficult times. Nurturing and cherishing friendships require effort, empathy, and open communication. By investing in these relationships, we create a support system that enriches our lives and helps us grow as individuals. Friendship is a gift that brings joy, love, and understanding, making life’s journey more meaningful and fulfilling.

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What Is True Friendship?

Friendship is often defined as a relationship of mutual affection, platonic intimacy, and care between individuals. Like other relationships we have, including with family or romantic partners, friendship may have challenges. “Real” or "True” friendship can be terms used to describe healthy relationships between two or more friends. As healthy relationships contribute to mental health, many individuals may wonder how to cultivate this type of friendship.  

Healthy friendships may be long-term bonds between those with healthy boundaries, mutual respect for one another, and positive intentions. Unhealthy friendships might be formed from a desire for money, status, or another external reason. For the most part, a healthy friend is someone who respects your boundaries, remains trustworthy, and shows you empathy.

True friendship explained

What is true friendship? Several factors might go into a healthy friendship connection, including the following. 

True friends can show empathy to each other. Empathy is an experience of feeling the emotions of others or being able to put yourself in their shoes. By empathizing with someone, you can see why a particular situation or subject may matter to them. In a friendship, empathy might look like offering moral support during difficult times, actively listening when someone talks about their feelings, or understanding when a friend makes an honest mistake. 

Someone seeking friendship with others for impure motives might struggle to feel empathy. Friends who end connections with others due to minor mistakes or inconveniences may also see friends as disposable.

Trustworthiness

The more you spend time with someone, the more you might get to know them. Over time, you'll often learn their behavioral patterns or how they treat you and other people. Being trustworthy is one of the important qualities of a good friend . A true friend will likely not betray you, disregard your limits, or make you question yourself. They may support you when they're able, try to remain open in communication, and stick to their word.

Mutual respect

Real friends are usually ones that have mutual respect for one another. Although both parties may not always agree, they could still admire each other and believe they're both doing their best and acting out of positive intentions. Close friends may argue or disagree at times. However, disrespect might include behaviors like: 

• Disregarding one friend's boundaries
• Being passive aggressive or giving the “silent treatment”
• Abandonment
• Making light of physical illnesses
• Cruel jokes
• Being late to most scheduled hangouts
• Peer pressure 

Elements of friendship 

In most cases, true friendship requires empathy, trustworthiness, and mutual respect. How someone acts when they see someone else succeeding or failing can indicate how they feel about the relationship. True friends may continue to be in your life through struggles and gains as long as the relationship is healthy. 

When you're in the company of a real friend, you might feel comfortable and at ease. Frequently unpleasant emotions in the company of a specific individual could indicate an underlying issue. 

Healthy friends might also allow you to have other friends and connections. Although possessiveness might be associated with unhealthy romances, friends could also demand complete fidelity. However, connecting and building friendships with more than one person can be normal.

How friends behave around others in their lives 

How one behaves around the people in their life might show how they would act as a friend. An individual who gossips, spreads rumors, or complains about friends in their absences might do the same with you. In many cases, it can be unhealthy to simply accept this behavior or continue associating with that individual.

How to find healthy friends

Finding trustworthy and safe friends can feel challenging if you have previously experienced unhealthy relationships. However, it may be possible. There are a few ways you can try to make healthy friends, including: 

• Attending a social group at school, on campus, or at work 
• Talking to coworkers at your place of employment
• Connecting with like-minded individuals in an online social group
• Talking to those who seem to have made healthy efforts in their lives
• Avoiding those who seem to discard friends often 
• Going to a platonic blind dating event 
• Meeting people at an event like pride, the farmer's market, or a fair 
• Asking your current friends for recommendations 
• Attending university
• Joining a volunteer organization 
• Going on a group trip 

You may find unhealthy people in any situation. However, set boundaries and use your judgment to determine who might be a healthy choice to connect with. You do not have to stay friends with someone hurting you or acting unhealthily with others in their life.

Therapy options 

Speaking with a counselor or therapist may be beneficial if you want to determine whether your friendship is healthy or learn how to make new friends. A therapist may be able to give you advice regarding your friendships or other relationships you are confused about. If you live with social anxiety or struggle to make time to meet with a therapist, you might also benefit from online therapy, which allows you to choose a schedule that works for you. 

Online therapy has been proven to be as effective as in-person therapy for many symptoms, mental health conditions, and concerns. You can choose whether to meet with your online counselor via video, phone, or live chat sessions, and you can message them after sessions if you have any questions. 

Online platforms like BetterHelp can be beneficial if you struggle to find a therapist in your area.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is real and true friendship? What are the signs of true friendship? What is the value of true friendship?

What is the foundation of true friendship? What makes a good friendship? Does true friendship last forever? What is the most important thing in friendship? What makes a relationship a true friendship? What are 3 signs of a toxic friendship? How do you keep a friendship strong? What causes friendships to end? When to end a friendship? What is true friendship? And the top 6 secrets of making friendships even stronger.

What is loyalty in friendship? How do you express true friendship in words?

• Our Complete List: Relatable Songs About Friendship Medically reviewed by Karen Foster , LPC
• The Little Things That Can Harm A Friendship Medically reviewed by Laura Angers Maddox , NCC, LPC
• Relationships and Relations

Essay on Importance of Friendship

Students are often asked to write an essay on Importance of Friendship in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Importance of Friendship

The essence of friendship.

Friendship is a valuable treasure in our lives. It is a bond of love, trust, and mutual respect. Friends stand by us in times of joy and sorrow, making life more meaningful.

Role of Friendship

Friends teach us important life lessons. They help us understand different perspectives, fostering empathy and compassion. They also offer emotional support and help us build our confidence.

Friendship and Personal Growth

Friendship encourages personal growth. It nurtures our emotional intelligence, helps us learn to communicate effectively, and develops our problem-solving skills. True friendship is a gift that enriches our life journey.

Also check:

• Speech on Importance of Friendship

250 Words Essay on Importance of Friendship

Friendship, a profound human experience, is a cornerstone of our social fabric. It transcends the boundaries of race, religion, and culture, fostering an environment of mutual respect, understanding, and shared values.

Psychological Impact of Friendship

Friendship plays a critical role in our psychological well-being. It provides emotional support, helping to mitigate stress and anxiety. Friends serve as a sounding board, allowing us to express our thoughts and emotions freely, which can be therapeutic and contribute to our overall mental health.

Friendship as a Learning Platform

Friendship is also a platform for personal growth and learning. Friends expose us to diverse perspectives, encouraging us to think critically and broaden our horizons. They challenge our beliefs, prompting us to question and refine our viewpoints, fostering our intellectual growth.

The Role of Friendship in Shaping Character

Moreover, friendship shapes our character. The qualities we admire in our friends often inspire us to cultivate those traits within ourselves. They mirror our strengths and weaknesses, helping us to self-reflect and strive for personal improvement.

Friendship and Social Cohesion

On a societal level, friendships foster social cohesion. They promote empathy and tolerance, as we learn to accept our friends’ differences and appreciate our commonalities. This understanding and acceptance can extend beyond our immediate circle, promoting a more inclusive society.

In conclusion, the importance of friendship cannot be overstated. It supports our mental health, encourages personal growth, shapes our character, and promotes social cohesion. Despite its often underestimated value, friendship is an integral part of our lives, enriching our experiences and contributing to our personal and societal well-being.

500 Words Essay on Importance of Friendship

The value of friendship.

Friendship, a universal human experience, is not just a simple interpersonal relationship. It is a complex bond formed between individuals, serving as a cornerstone in the architecture of our social life. It provides us with a sense of belonging, emotional support, and personal growth.

Emotional Support and Mental Health

One of the primary importances of friendship lies in its capacity to provide emotional support. Friends are our confidants, providing us a safe space to express our feelings, fears, hopes, and dreams without the fear of judgment. They provide comfort during times of stress, acting as a buffer against mental health issues like depression and anxiety. Their presence and understanding can help us navigate through the complexities of life, promoting emotional well-being.

Social Development and Personal Growth

Friendship plays a crucial role in our social development and personal growth. Friends expose us to diverse perspectives, cultures, and experiences, broadening our worldview. They challenge our beliefs, encourage us to step out of our comfort zones, and inspire us to become better versions of ourselves. This process of mutual learning and growth is a significant aspect of friendship.

Resilience in the Face of Adversity

Friends provide us with the resilience to face adversity. They stand by us in times of crisis, offering emotional, and sometimes, practical support. Their presence can help us develop resilience, enabling us to bounce back from life’s challenges. The shared experiences of overcoming adversity often strengthen the bond of friendship, making it more profound and meaningful.

Physical Health and Longevity

The importance of friendship extends to our physical health and longevity. Studies suggest that strong social connections can contribute to a longer, healthier life. Friends can encourage positive lifestyle habits such as regular exercise and a balanced diet. Moreover, the happiness derived from friendship can boost our immune system, reducing the risk of chronic diseases.

Friendship and Society

On a larger scale, friendship contributes to societal harmony. It fosters empathy, understanding, and respect among individuals, creating a more inclusive and tolerant society. Friends from diverse backgrounds can help break down cultural and social barriers, promoting unity and cooperation.

In conclusion, friendship is a vital aspect of our lives, providing emotional support, personal growth, resilience, health benefits, and contributing to societal harmony. It is a cherished bond that enriches our lives, making our journey through life more enjoyable and meaningful. As Aristotle once said, “In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. They keep the young out of mischief; they comfort and aid the old in their weakness, and they incite those in the prime of life to noble deeds.” This encapsulates the importance of friendship in our lives.

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Friendship — A Personal Experience with True Friendship

A Personal Experience with True Friendship

• Categories: Friendship

About this sample

Words: 2265 |

12 min read

Published: Nov 6, 2018

Words: 2265 | Pages: 3 | 12 min read

Table of contents

Personal experience essay outline, personal experience essay example, introduction.

• Definition and significance of friendship
• The importance of understanding and being understood in friendship

Friendship Story: Bill's Experience

• Introduction of Bill, a popular student in high school
• Bill's sociable and eloquent personality
• The impact of Bill's popularity on his friendships
• National Friendship Day and the surprising outcome for Bill

Lesson Learned from Bill's Experience

• Bill's realization about the importance of true friendship
• The shift in Bill's approach to friendship
• The significance of understanding and communication in friendships

Personal View on Friendship

• Different types of friendships encountered
• The value of true and enduring friendships
• Lessons learned from various friendship experiences
• The process of building true friendships
• The importance of authenticity and acceptance in friendships
• The enduring value of quality friendships

My personal view on friendship

Works cited.

• Bell, R. A., & Greene, J. O. (2018). The influence of social media on adolescents and teenagers: A literature review. Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange, 11(1), 1-17.
• Brown, B. B., & Lohr, M. J. (2017). Friendships in adolescence. Current Opinion in Psychology, 16, 55-59.
• Bukowski, W. M., Hoza, B., & Boivin, M. (2018). Measuring friendship quality during pre- and early adolescence: The development and psychometric properties of the Friendship Qualities Scale. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 35(5), 696-715.
• Cohen, S. (2017). Social relationships and health. American Psychologist, 59(8), 676-684.
• Demir, M., & Weitekamp, L. A. (2017). I am so happy ‘cause today I found my friend: Friendship and personality as predictors of happiness. Journal of Happiness Studies, 18(6), 1539-1561.
• Etkin, R. G., Hecht, M. L., & Taylor, K. N. (2018). The dark side of friendship: Dark personality traits and friendship betrayal. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 35(6), 834-852.
• Johnson, B., & Christensen, L. (2017). Educational research: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches. Sage Publications.
• Little, T. D., & Card, N. A. (2017). Longitudinal data analysis for social and behavioral sciences: An introduction. Guilford Publications.
• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. Guilford Publications.
• Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (2018). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482-497.

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600 Words Short Reflective Essay On True Friendship In English

True friendship and its value, importance, you can in this essay. We have tried our best to make this an understandable Paragraph with examples for all class students.

Read and don’t forget to share your views about this article.

Table of Contents

True Friendship Essay For All Class Students And Children

Tru Friendship is a great blessing in life. True friendship is pure and selfless because friends are willing to go through all kinds of difficulties just to help one another. It’s something to appreciate as true friends are hard to find these days.

As I got closer to him, I could see that it wasn’t a corpse, but an unconscious man. Since my house was nearby, I took him there and gave him cold water to drink. I then took him to my room where he rested on my bed.

This man was a stranger and yet he felt so familiar. He seemed to have the same temperament as me and we even had the same haircut! To me, this man looked like a long-lost brother or an old friend I didn’t even know.

After two days in my room, the man finally woke up and told me his name: Frank. I was surprised because that’s what I called my best friend! And then it occurred to me that since this man looked like my best friend, he must be his twin brother, with whom we long lost touch.

When I watched Frank closely, he looked very much like my best friend! He enjoyed playing video games and even ate the same food as my best friend. It felt like he never left us while we were still in contact with him.

Although they looked so much alike, there was something about Frank that set him apart from my best friend: his mysterious past. In the letter Frank gave me, he told me how he and his brother were separated after their parents died in a traffic accident. He said that our best friend was adopted by a foster family and has lived there ever since.

After reading about Frank’s situation, I wanted to do something to help him find his twin brother. I decided to give him all of my best friend’s pictures in the hopes that he could learn something about his twin.

Frank used these pictures to find out where our best friend was. He said goodbye to me and told me that he would tell us about his whole ordeal when he comes back. The way he talked sounded like he would never come back, but I didn’t want to believe it.

My best friend and I waited longingly for Frank to return at the doorstep of our house. After a few days, Frank came back with an Asian man who he said was his twin brother! At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes because this man didn’t look like us! However, our best friend wasn’t that surprised because he said that Frank often spoke about his twin brother who was adopted by a family in the Philippines.

My best  friend and I were 18 at the time, but we never thought of searching for each other’s family on social media. We always believe that it would be better to meet face to face because we would never know what might happen along the way.

After so many years of separation, the three of us finally had a family reunion. Now that I have found my lost brother and best friend, I feel like my life has been fulfilled. It’s like I’m complete now!

Hello! Welcome to my Blog StudyParagraphs.co. My name is Angelina. I am a college professor. I love reading writing for kids students. This blog is full with valuable knowledge for all class students. Thank you for reading my articles.

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Book Review: Memoirist Lilly Dancyger’s penetrating essays explore the power of female friendships

This cover image released by Dial Press shows “First Love” by Lilly Dancyger. (Dial Press via AP)

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Who means more to you — your friends or your lovers? In a vivid, thoughtful and nuanced collection of essays, Lilly Dancyger explores the powerful role that female friendships played in her chaotic upbringing marked by her parents’ heroin use and her father’s untimely death when she was only 12.

“First Love: Essays on Friendship” begins with a beautiful paean to her cousin Sabina, who was raped and murdered at age 20 on her way home from a club. As little kids, their older relatives used to call them Snow White and Rose Red after the Grimm’s fairy tale, “two sisters who are not rivals or foils, but simply love each other.”

That simple, uncomplicated love would become the template for a series of subsequent relationships with girls and women that helped her survive her self-destructive adolescence and provided unconditional support as she scrambled to create a new identity as a “hypercompetent” writer, teacher and editor. “It’s true that I’ve never been satisfied with friendships that stay on the surface. That my friends are my family, my truest beloveds, each relationship a world of its own,” she writes in the title essay “First Love.”

The collection stands out not just for its elegant, unadorned writing but also for the way she effortlessly pivots between personal history and spot-on cultural criticism that both comments on and critiques the way that girls and women have been portrayed — and have portrayed themselves — in the media, including on online platforms like Tumblr and Instagram.

For instance, she examines the 1994 Peter Jackson film, “Heavenly Creatures,” based on the true story of two teenage girls who bludgeoned to death one of their mothers. And in the essay “Sad Girls,” about the suicide of a close friend, she analyzes the allure of self-destructive figures like Sylvia Plath and Janis Joplin to a certain type of teen, including herself, who wallows in sadness and wants to make sure “the world knew we were in pain.”

In the last essay, “On Murder Memoirs,” Dancyger considers the runaway popularity of true crime stories as she tries to explain her decision not to attend the trial of the man charged with killing her cousin — even though she was trained as a journalist and wrote a well-regarded book about her late father that relied on investigative reporting. “When I finally sat down to write about Sabina, the story that came out was not about murder at all,” she says. “It was a love story.”

Readers can be thankful that it did.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

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Like Love by Maggie Nelson review – music, passion and friendship

Vibrant essays from the author of The Argonauts touch on art, inspiration, and many of the central dilemmas of our times

“A s a child I had so much energy I’d lie awake and feel my organs smolder,” Maggie Nelson wrote in 2005’s Jane: A Murder . She was a dancer before she was a writer and you can feel the commitment to the fire of bodily motion in her masterpieces: the shimmeringly brutal excavation of girlhood and violence in Jane , the story of her aunt’s killing at the hands of a rapist; the clear-headed yet ecstatic celebration of the transformations of pregnancy and top surgery, and the new kind of family she and her trans partner brought into being in The Argonauts (2015). Her dedication to the material finds the forms it needs; I don’t think she sets out to bend genres. Instead, her high-stakes eviscerations of body settle into radically new forms.

Is this the energy of the rebel or the valedictorian? For decades, Nelson has parted her hair, fastened her top button, won the right grades and grants while throwing herself voluptuously into the counterculture, dreaming of being an “ electric ribbon of horniness and divine grace ” like one of her inspirations, Prince . It’s an American energy – expansive, new, full of power, pleasure, change and motion; a frontier energy, even when she’s writing about New York. We can hear Whitman behind her, and Emerson. “Power ceases in the instant of repose,” Emerson pronounces in Self-Reliance ; “it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of a gulf, in the darting to an aim.”

A decade after The Argonauts became the bible of English graduates everywhere, the essays in Like Love arrive to help us understand Nelson’s place in a culture where, to her half-delight, she has become such a powerful voice. Spanning two decades, they range from appreciations of influences including Prince and Judith Butler , to wild, freefalling conversations with figures such as Björk, Wayne Koestenbaum and Jacqueline Rose. There is a passionate, wondering account of her formative half-erotic friendship with the singer Lhasa de Sela . The writing isn’t consistent, any more than her books are. But I like to take my thinkers and writers whole, as she does. The essays offer a kind of composite self-portrait, and illustrate how she thinks, sometimes painstakingly, sometimes with casual jubilance, about some of the central dilemmas of our time.

In the face of the climate crisis, how to avoid “giving in to the narcissistic spectacle of the slo-mo Titanic going down”? In the face of the crisis in feminism, how and whether to move beyond sexual difference? The written exchanges show her interlocutors thinking it through, too. “ You dare to step into the future like no one else atm ,” Björk says. It’s true. This is where all that restless energy is leading. This is why she’s an Emersonian, shying away from nihilism. “There are new lands, new men, new thoughts,” Emerson wrote in Nature , discarding the “dry bones” of his ancestors; “Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.”

In her powerful piece on the artist Carolee Schneemann , Nelson posits her as a female incarnation of Emerson’s self-reliant man. But it’s Nelson herself who proffers new laws and worship – whose project amounts to a practical philosophy of contemporary American culture. In The Argonauts she offers the gift of a future we can somehow share; one that acknowledges the miseries of the present, that has space for dreams, but is obstinately material and in our world. Here, in dialogue with Jacqueline Rose, she proposes that “ Everybody deserves the kind of non-stultifying internal breathing space of fluidity or instability that is attributed to queers, or to women, or whatever.”

Like Love’s title comes from writer and theatre critic Hilton Als ’s vision of a group on the subway not as white women or black men but as mouths that need filling “with something wet or dry, like love, or unfamiliar and savory, like love”. Nelson, too, is drawn to mouths – to orifices in general – as organs of pleasure and pain, and as portals enabling a radical openness.

Because Nelson likes writing about her friends, there’s a kind of homogeneity to much of the book that cumulatively left me feeling a little claustrophobic, longing especially for the roominess of time travel. With the exception of 2009’s Bluets , Nelson’s writing is so located in the postwar world that the past can feel entirely absent. This is her affinity with Emerson and Whitman again – her song to the future – but I wonder if I’m alone in wishing that, alongside those two often acknowledged ancestors, her future could have artists, activists and libertines from earlier centuries informing it, too.

Which is not to say that she’s wrong to write about the people in her circle. The brutality of the present moment may require us precisely to batten down the hatches and commit to extreme solidarity. At a time when institutional life is collapsing, when the pandemic privileged family over friends, when work expands in ways that leave many too exhausted to socialise, Nelson demonstrates what it means to dedicate yourself to a cohort with seriousness and strenuousness. “You, to me, quickly became an inspiration,” she tells the poet Brian Blanchfield , “a brother, a support in times of seriously dark waters, an editor, a lender of excellent and pivotal books, a cheerleader, a colleague, a couch sleeper (and couch mover), a fellow swimmer … a corrupting gambler, (queer) family.” Like Love may be one of the most movingly specific, the most lovingly unruly celebrations of the ethics of friendship we have.

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Vietnam tore two families apart. This fast-paced narrative explores why.

In “Diplomats at War,” Charles Trueheart delves into the story of his father and godfather — diplomats and friends who parted ways after a fateful policy decision.

One afternoon in the summer of 2019, Rufus Phillips , 89, a Vietnam hand and legendary former CIA officer, was casting six decades back to recall how the quagmire had begun. We sat in a modest apartment on a low floor of a tall building in Northern Virginia, surrounded by art and books, bounty of his years in Asia.

“We faced more turning points in Vietnam than you could count, but that was a point of no return,” he said of the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his shadowy brother Ngo Dinh Nhu in a 1963 coup coyly blessed by the Kennedy administration. To Phillips, the toll of that moment was clear: U.S. officials, even the most enlightened ones who had come to Saigon in hopes of doing good, would never find a stable course to anything approximating democracy, let alone a military victory.

Phillips is among the Saigon staffers who play small but significant roles in Charles Trueheart’s book “ Diplomats at War .” The two men at the heart of the book — the diplomats of the title — are Frederick “Fritz” Nolting, John F. Kennedy’s ambassador in Vietnam from 1961 to 1963, and Nolting’s No. 2, William Trueheart. In the final months of the Diem regime, as the noose tightened, Nolting and Trueheart, Virginian gentlemen of the Foreign Service and friends since their graduate school days studying epistemology in Charlottesville, parted ways.

“Diplomats” reprises a drama first depicted 52 years ago in David Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,” but what makes this telling so enthralling is that Trueheart is the author’s father and Nolting his godfather. The question of what caused the two men to fall out — was it a policy breach, a personal betrayal or both? — drives the son’s quest and the fast-paced narrative. For the rest of their lives, Nolting and the elder Trueheart exchanged nary a word. (Nolting died in 1989, Trueheart in 1992.) In Trueheart’s family, the rupture would become taboo — roped off by his father as “the business with Fritz.” To Nolting, it remained an unforgivable sin. And to the son and godson, on the cusp of adulthood, the break engendered a “lifetime of stewing about the whole thing.”

Trueheart the son, a former Paris bureau chief for The Washington Post and longtime director of the American Library in Paris, has written a “work of memory hiding inside a work of history” — a tricky endeavor. To be sure, moments of awkward ice-dancing arise: Trueheart père morphs from “William Trueheart” to “Bill” to “my father” and, only occasionally, “Daddy.” But the son has achieved something rare in the annals of diplomatic history, mining family letters, federal archives and oral history to craft a tale both riveting and revelatory, a brisk drama that toggles between Saigon and Washington to offer an inside tour of the secret diplomacy — the cajoling and conniving — as the coup fuse burned.

It was Nolting who in 1961 — when the Geneva Accords still restricted the number of U.S. military personnel to 685 — wrote his old friend encouraging him to “get some realism into the heads of some over-idealistic Americans who seem to think the Communists won’t swallow up an infant democracy tenderized a la Rousseau.” But from the first, Trueheart pushed the harder line and would eventually side with those back in Washington who had lost faith in the Diem regime.

Throughout it all, young Charlie is present, a preteen fixated on, in order of import: cars (the family Ford Fairlane; the Mercedes 220S, shipped in from London; the state cars, “flags flying”), expat would-be street gangs, Boy Scouts and judo lessons at the Cercle Sportif. Fifty years after the war, we are increasingly enlightened by an emerging literature that revisits the Vietnamese side. Not here. Charlie’s closest relationship with a Vietnamese person was with the family chauffeur. And yet, as witness and researcher, he has curiosity on his side.

In exploring what went wrong, the story centers on the fateful summer of 1963. Ambassador Nolting went on holiday. For six weeks, Trueheart ran the Embassy. The explosion that led to the friendship’s end — and in time, as Trueheart the son notes, “the demise of American prudence and clear thinking — came out of nowhere.” The Buddhists of South Vietnam staged an uprising, catching the Americans unaware. The regime cracked down, and the CIA, the State Department and the White House began to plot. Throughout it all, Trueheart, as the ambassador’s chargé d’affaires, made no effort to contact his absent boss. Nolting would forever insist he might have saved the day, had he been recalled.

Yet Nolting did himself no favors that summer, giving an interview to journalist Neil Sheehan in which he downplayed the monks’ complaints: “I have never seen any evidence of religious persecution.” The Buddhists sent a plea to JFK: “The Ambassador would probably want to be presented with nearly 6,000,000 corpses of Jews before being convinced of religious discrimination.” But the coup that followed was, indeed, an ugly affair: As Washington closed its eyes (“not stimulate, not thwart,” in Trueheart’s parsing of the CIA cables), the Ngo brothers imagined themselves gaining safe passage, only to end up “bound and gagged” by insurrectionist generals, “sprayed with machine gun bullets” and “stabbed for good measure.”

Trueheart expertly reprises the drama, but an undertow pervades. “I knew Bill Trueheart only as a son knows a father,” the author writes, “that is intimately, but not at all well.” We learn the contours — the father “worked seven days a week,” “he was more of a distant example” — but Bill Trueheart is felt more by his absence than his presence. Even years later, when the son asked for his father’s thoughts on the murders of the brothers Ngo, the reply seemed to him “rather bloodlessly analytical.”

In the end, it is not Nolting but the author’s father who stands as a cipher. “My father never spoke a meaningful word to me about the summer of 1963.” Author and reader wait to see and hear the fireworks of contretemps, but instead what we hear from the senior Trueheart, three times, is: “Mea culpa.” Trueheart’s son makes no excuses, leaving the record blank — “It would be so interesting to know in his own words what he was feeling” — and instead poses the essential questions: “I have to ask, here and throughout this tragic fracture: did these two close friends of twenty-five years never sit down together in the winter and spring of 1963 and speak frankly to one another? Air their doubts, test their analyses, explore their differences?” As it turns out, it is not the drama of father and son, but of matters of state, that takes on sharper, trenchant focus.

If Trueheart’s father remains remote, his mother, Phoebe, offers her son a proximate witness with an acerbic tongue and emotional intelligence. The diplomat’s wife, to be sure, played hostess. She oversaw seating charts and proffered cocktails at all hours, but as the screws tightened that summer, Phoebe also observed — and acted. We are grateful for the narrative ballast. “To look at me,” Phoebe wrote in a letter that summer, “I am the picture of calm and tranquility. Inside I am churned up. When I do sleep, I have horrible dreams of blood, soldiers, and little children torn apart. … The only time I sleep is when I’ve had lots to drink or taken Seconal.” In the rush to the coup, as the father recedes, or the record fades to black, we hear Phoebe tally the toll on her husband: “He is running on nerves.”

The coup, like all coups, did little to better the lives of the local populace. Rufus Phillips, who died in 2021, was one of the last Americans to see Diem alive. “Do you think there will be a coup?” President Kennedy asked the American. “I looked him in the eye,” Phillips recounted. “I couldn’t lie to him. ‘I am afraid so, Mr. President.’ I felt like crying.” After Diem, there followed “a half-dozen nonviolent coups by fractious Vietnamese generals.” Above all, his removal ended hope for a settlement with Hanoi and, as Trueheart writes, “an off-ramp for the United States from the road to a wider war.” Nolting would remain bitter, and righteous, to the end. “The albatross of Diem’s murder,” he wrote years later, “still hangs heavy around our country’s neck, and especially around the neck of those who plotted his downfall.”

Andrew Meier is the author, most recently, of “Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty” and is at work on a book about two friends — one American, one Vietnamese — caught in the crossfire of the Vietnam War’s secret counterintelligence battles.

Diplomats at War

Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict

By Charles Trueheart

University of Virginia. 343 pp. $34.95

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‘baby reindeer’: stephen king writes essay praising netflix stalker series.

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BANGOR, ME - SEPTEMBER 06: Stephen King attends a special screening of "IT" at Bangor Mall Cinemas ... [+] 10 on September 6, 2017 in Bangor, Maine. (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images for Warner Bros.)

Baby Reindeer fan Stephen King loves the Netflix stalker series so much that he’s gone from posting about it on X to writing an essay on it for a major publication.

The legendary horror author became a huge proponent of the series — based on comedian Richard Gadd’s one-man stage play about his encounter with a stalker he dubbed “Martha” — with a post on X on April 28. In it, the Carrie , IT and Misery author simply wrote, “BABY REINDEER. Holy s—t.”

A blazing success on Netflix, Baby Reindeer is based on Gadd’s harrowing real-life encounter with a stalker. For legal reasons and privacy purposes, Gadd plays a fictionalized version of himself named Donny Dunn for the limited series, while he dubs his stalker “Martha” (Jessica Gunning).

As to the validity of the story, Gadd has said during publicity rounds for the film, “Emotionally, it’s all 100% true.” Gadd also revealed that throughout his stalker ordeal, Martha sent him more than 41,000 emails and left him more than 350 hours of voicemails, among other alarming actions.

King writes in a recent essay for The Times of London that he didn’t start watching Baby Reindeer right away but once he tuned in, he couldn’t stop.

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“Here, less than two minutes into the first episode, we can see what sets Baby Reindeer apart from so many dramas, dramedies and psychodramas that populate the occasional richness (and more common mediocrity) of streaming TV, we’ve been given the essential nature of two pivotal characters in less than two minutes,” King writes in the Times .

The nature of Donny and Martha, King adds, is that “they are both psychologically needy.”

“But it’s Martha who is mentally unstable and manipulative,” King writes in the Times . “Yet Donny — in spite of googly, hopeful eyes that continually say don’t hurt me — has the unusual and rather heroic ability to see into himself. His comedy routine bombs because ‘don’t hurt me’ rarely gets laughs.”

Because Baby Reindeer has become such a global spectacle, viewers have tried to track “Martha” down, which alarmed Gunning . After that, a woman claiming to be the real Martha came forward in an interview with The Daily Mail , which did not identify her by name.

In the interview, “Martha” said she was considering legal action against Gadd over the harm Baby Reindeer has allegedly caused her.

Kathy Bates watches over James Caan in a scene from the film 'Misery', 1990. (Photo by Columbia ... [+] Pictures/Getty Images)

King Says ‘Baby Reindeer’ Reminded Him Of His ‘Misery’

Of course, many of Stephen King’s novels have been turned into television miniseries like The Stand — twice — while others like Carrie , The Dead Zone , IT and Pet Sematary — twice — have been adapted into feature films.

One of King’s novels-turned-film adaptations even went on to Oscar greatness, as 1990’s Misery earned Kathy Bates an Oscar for Best Actress. In the film, Bates stars as Annie Wilkes, a nurse who saves a famous romance novelist, Paul Sheldon (James Caan), after he crashes his car during a blizzard in a remote area of Colorado.

Bedridden with two broken legs and a damaged shoulder in the nurse’s home, Paul soon discovers Annie’s unhealthy obsession with him and his work, which leads the woman to resort to violent measures to keep the author to herself.

While Baby Reindeer takes place in a much different setting, the stalker element of Richard Gadd’s true-life tale has some parallels. After he started watching Baby Reindeer , King had some revelations, first about his and Gadd’s work, and then another about the unique title of the Netflix series.

“My first thought was to thank God my novel [ Misery ] came first, or people would assume I’d stolen it from Richard Gadd, who wrote and produced the seven-episode series and also stars in it,” King writes in The Times of London essay. “My second thought was that Donny Dunn (Gadd) actually looks like a baby reindeer, with his big eyes and timid manner. The scruffy beard adds to this impression rather than distracting from it.”

In addition to his praise for Gadd’s work on the series, King is high on the performance of his co-star who plays Martha in the limited series. In Baby Reindeer , Martha's obsession with Donny begins after the struggling comedian shows the woman kindness at an establishment where he’s a bartender.

“Then comes Martha Scott ( Jessica Gunning ), who appears one day in the pub where Donny works. It’s a showstopper of an entrance, hands down the equal of our introduction (‘I’m your No 1 fan’) to Misery ’s Annie Wilkes,” King writes in the Times . “We take Martha’s measure before she has said a single word: overweight, slump-shouldered, frowsy-haired; her pillocky pink sweater turned up on one side, her colorful bag hanging dispiritedly from her hand.”

After delving into the stories of Gadd’s Baby Reindeer and his Misery , King also notes in his Times essay that he not only feels empathy for Donny but for Martha as well.

All seven episodes of Baby Reindeer are streaming on Netflix.

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Amy Poehler Wants Her True-Crime Podcast to Make You Laugh

“Women Talkin’ ’Bout Murder,” a loving sendup of the podcast genre, is the latest satirical show from Poehler and her improv friends.

By Sarah Lyall

It was a Friday morning in December, and Amy Poehler was talking about murder. More specifically, she was directing a pair of comic actors over Zoom as they talked about murder in their guise as hosts of a fictional true-crime podcast titled — yes — “Women Talkin’ ’Bout Murder.” Today’s victim: Mary Benson, who went on a yoga retreat and plunged to an untimely demise at the bottom of a ravine.

“Namaste, a Sanskrit greeting that literally means ‘I bow to you’ — and, coincidentally, the last words Mary Benson spoke before she took her final bow on this earth,’” one of the actors, Emily Spivey, ad-libbed in a conspiratorial manner. “Namaste indeed.”

Having been given the story outline — dead lady, picturesque location, potentially murderous yogis — Spivey and her co-host, Liz Cackowski, were improvising the rest, with Poehler offering improv-friendly “yes, and”-style suggestions, punctuated by wild spurts of laughter.

The three women have a long history, dating back to their days on “Saturday Night Live” — Poehler was a cast member, Spivey and Cackowski writers — in the early 2000s. Their many collaborations include the 2019 movie “Wine Country,” written by Spivey and Cackowski and directed by Poehler, in which they and yet more of their comedy friends — Ana Gasteyer, Paula Pell and Maya Rudolph among them — play a group of women on an alcohol-fueled 50th-birthday excursion to Napa.

In character as Donna and Jobeth, the “Murder” podcast hosts, Cackowski and Spivey riffed about their negative attitudes toward yoga. “So good, so good,” Poehler interjected. “Liz, do you want to get us into this corpse-pose thing and talk about how there’s something creepy about yoga, anyway?”

“Women Talkin’ ’Bout Murder,” a 10-part series whose first episode will be released on Thursday, is the third satirical podcast produced by Poehler’s production company, Paper Kite, in partnership with Audacy Podcasts. (A fourth podcast, “Million Dollar Advice,” which premiered in March, provides non-satirical advice on workplace dilemmas.) The first title in the collaboration, “Say More With Dr? Sheila,” featuring Poehler as an aggressively incompetent couples therapist, had its debut last fall. (It reached No. 1 on the Apple Podcast comedy chart, and No. 4 overall.) The second, “The Chris Chatman Do-Over,” which stars the comedian Ike Barinholtz as a hot-take-spouting Joe Rogan-esque shock jock, wrapped up last month.

Conceived last year during the Hollywood writers’ strike, when the no-writing rules were waived for podcasts, “Women Talkin’ ’Bout Murder” was inspired by Poehler and Cackowski’s addiction to podcasts — the cheesy as well as the good.

“I personally am very grateful for how podcasts can make people feel less alone and more connected,” Poehler said during a Zoom interview from her office at Paper Kite in Culver City, Calif. Behind her loomed a large object that looked like some sort of commemorative platter, but was in fact the seal of Pawnee, Ind., the fictional city from her sitcom “Parks and Recreation.”

“That’s the serious version of things,” Poehler continued. “Then there’s the comedic version, which comes from loving something and wanting to do a parody take on it.”

These days, it’s hard to find a celebrity who doesn’t have a podcast featuring other celebrities. On “Armchair Expert,” Dax Shepard shoots the breeze with guests like David Sedaris and Connie Britton. On “Unqualified,” Anna Faris gives relationship advice to, among others, Christina Ricci, Kevin Bacon and David Duchovny. And on “Street You Grew Up On,” people like Eva Longoria, Jimmy Kimmel and Issa Rae chat about their childhoods with Kerry Washington.

Poehler’s podcasts also feature a constellation of stars, mostly old friends she knows from her early improv days in Chicago and New York, and from “Saturday Night Live.” Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Will Forte, and Fred Armisen (playing a rather funny A.I. bot) all make appearances in various guises — as fictional characters rather than themselves.

Cackowski compared their approach to that of Armisen, Seth Myers and Bill Hader in “Documentary Now,” the series on Netflix that parodies that genre. “What if we made ‘Documentary Now’ a podcast?” she said. “The whole project has been about which of our friends come hang out and improvise.”

The podcasts include Poehler’s satirical sendups of ads from the sponsors, including ZipRecruiter, eharmony and Kroger, and they stand out in a crowded market, said Jenna Weiss-Berman, executive vice president of Audacy Podcasts. After a period of almost unfettered growth, the industry has endured painful retrenchments in the past year and a half or so, and finding something new and fresh is increasingly difficult, she said.

“This isn’t just celebrities chatting with other celebrities,” Weiss-Berman said. “This is Amy Poehler doing her thing, which is being the master of improv.” While fictional podcasts can sound overly theatrical and dramatic, Weiss-Berman said, Poehler’s titles are “fast and fun.”

Case in point: “Say More,” both an homage to, and a takedown of, the popular genre in which therapists broadcast their sessions with patients. (The title comes from a phrase beloved of the celebrity therapist Esther Perel, who herself appears briefly on one of the episodes, endorsing Dr? Sheila.)

“It’s so interesting, from a voyeuristic point of view,” Poehler said. “But then you’re like, ‘But what kind of person would go on? And also, what kind of therapist, honestly, would do this in public?’”

Dr? Sheila — who is not a real doctor, and who insists for legal reasons that her patients utter the title “doctor” with a question mark in their voices — is fully committed to her ill-conceived therapeutic techniques, like inviting an outrageously intrusive mother-in-law to hide under a pile of blankets in the consulting room as her son and daughter-in-law discuss her lack of boundaries.

“I get to give advice that’s ridiculous,” Poehler said cheerfully. “Say More” reached its zenith (or maybe its nadir) in an episode called “Analysis Paralysis.” Poehler’s Dr? Sheila becomes so frazzled after a session with two married therapists who can’t articulate their problem that she calls her own therapist, Dr. Shelly Cavalier (Rachel Dratch), for support. “I’m frustrated that I’m so frustrated,” she says.

Triggered by Dr? Sheila’s ineptitude, Dr. Cavalier calls her therapist, Trish (Tina Fey), who in turn has to call her own therapist — one of the patients in Dr? Sheila’s original session — to complain about Dr. Cavalier. “I try to set up boundaries with her and she pushes them and pushes them,” Trish sobs.

Poehler described how it works.

“We had an episode where a couple wanted to open up their marriage,” she said. “So we said, ‘OK, here’s the game’ — because in improv you have a game that you’re playing. The game is he wants to open up the marriage, she’s reluctant. And then we think, what would be funny is if she ends up doing really well, and he’s thinking he made a mistake. The end. That’s all we do. And so what’s so fun is the improvisers who join us, they get to decide how they feel about everything and where it will go.”

“The Chris Chatman Do-Over” makes fun of the trope of the “ex-comedian mouthpiece guy who has a lot to say and a lot to learn,” Poehler said. Barinholtz plays Chatman, whose previous show “The Chris Chatman Confrontation,” was canceled after it became prohibitively offensive. Ordered to tone it down and attract female listeners as a condition of his return to the airwaves, Chatman continually makes offensive remarks in the guise of anti-wokeness. Each episode begins with an apology for something he said in the previous one.

As for “Women Talkin’ ’Bout Murder,” it comes from Poehler’s love of driving to work while listening to true-crime podcasts. (Among her favorites are the long-running series “Criminal” and the true-crime comedy cult hit “My Favorite Murder,” featuring long discursive meanderings by the hosts.)

That so many people relish in something so grisly and unpleasant, Poehler said, is one of the things she finds funny about true crime.

“It’s a genre that has so many very serious takes, but it’s so ripe for comedy, because why are we driving to work at 8 o’clock in the morning listening to people get dismembered? Why are all these women talking about these horrible things, and why are we all listening to it?”

One thing about the podcast ecosystem: Hosts are always appearing as guests on one another’s titles, in an endless Möbius strip of interviewers and interviewees. And so all the protagonists in the Poehler universe — Dr? Sheila, the true-crime hosts, and Chris Chatman — pop in and out of each other’s shows. For instance, a couple who sought help from Dr? Sheila will re-emerge on a later “Women Talkin’” episode delving into the mysterious death of the woman’s first husband on a cruise ship.

Poehler said that listening to podcasts helped her get through the difficult years of Covid, and that making them had buoyed her during the writers’ strike. Asked how she maintains her sanity during an unfunny moment in time, she replied, “Good laughs and good friends — that’s the recipe for getting through the toughest times.”

She then successfully deflected the question by channeling Dr.? Sheila, spouting a bunch of authoritative-sounding word salad.

“Sarah, I find it very interesting that you said I come across as happy,” she said. “One thing I’ve learned is that everybody is a lot of things most of the time.”

An earlier version of this article misidentified the actor who is among a range of stars regularly making appearances on Amy Poehler’s podcasts. It is Will Forte, not Will Arnett.

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Sarah Lyall is a writer at large for The Times, writing news, features and analysis across a wide range of sections. More about Sarah Lyall

The State of Podcasting

As consumers spend more time on video platforms like YouTube, many podcast creators are reimagining their work to be seen as well as heard .

The cast of the Nickelodeon series “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide” are among the stars of 2000s teen sitcoms who are using podcasts to connect with their Gen Z and millennial fan bases .

Christian Duguay’s podcast, “Valley Heat,” purports to be about the neighbors in the Rancho Equestrian District of Burbank, Calif. One thing is for sure: It’s masterfully absurd .

The success of Alex Cooper’s podcast, “Call Her Daddy,” has birthed a new media company. Can this millennial solve the riddle of what Gen Z wants ?

A host of media companies are all aiming to capitalize on interest in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump  with true-crime podcasts.