Among Friends
“Familiarity reduces the greatness of things”.
-Seneca the Younger
“Nothing is wonderful when you get used to it”.
-E. W. Howe
Who are we most conscious of being kind to? It is a given (or should be) to thank the barista who hands you your morning coffee or say “excuse me” if you accidentally cut in line. After all, we’d never want a stranger to think we were an inconsiderate person. The courtesies expected of us in polite society become second nature over time, and their absence does not often go unnoticed. But where to those “pleases” and “thank yous” start to drop off in our own social circles?
I want to draw our attention to the people we interact with more regularly and intimately: in particular our friends and partners. Think of a time when you felt the deafening absence of a gesture of courtesy. You can feel the hole in the conversation, can’t you? The place in which you would have thanked the barista goes unfilled when your partner hands you a cup of coffee. Why? Perhaps because they do it every morning, and you assume that they know that they are appreciated. The longer you spend with someone and the closer you become, the easier it is to make such assumptions.
Over time, the absence of courtesy threatens to eat away at any relationship. Things left unsaid grow louder and open the door to more damaging assumptions. No one, no matter how close you are, can read your mind. We have a deep need for affirmation. Its repeated absence leaves us at best feeling mild doubts, and at worst bubbling with resentment. I don’t intend this to sound ominous. I say it because I have been in situations where I have been devastated to feel a friendship that I cherished fade, seemingly without reason. I can’t help but look back and consider the fact that the courtesies we take for granted could have been the glue that was needed to maintain them.
Two words stood out to me in the quotes that I shared at the top of this page: “greatness” and “wonderful”. What a beautiful thing it would be to live in awareness of the pure gift that human relationships can be; to care about maintaining that greatness. Achieving that does not have to be as…naively romantic as it may sound. I’m not asking you to pledge your loyalty to your friends Anne of Green Gables style. (If you know, you know). I’m suggesting that we never stop saying “please”, “thank you”, and “the time we spend together is not a small thing to me”.
Today, I promise to never stop staying please and thank you. After all, it is no small gift, for example, to have a fiancé who always has my favorite coffee prepared even though he doesn’t drink it. In fact, that is just a big a gift as the hundreds of miles he travels to see me. It is a gift to have friends who tell me when they are proud of me. And you know what? None of them owe me a single one of those things. So, let’s not get used to it. Let’s fight the lack of effort that familiarity can breed. You say “excuse me” to a stranger out of social obligation, with no interest in extending that fleeting interaction. Think about how great the effect could be if we did not forget the people we love in those same common courtesies.