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A few weeks ago, I read an email from my friend Gary, part of regular, long-ish musings that he sends to a select few.  He was stimulated by the observation that people typically have no more than 150 friends and, true to his reflective nature, he dove in and found Robin Dunbar’s observations on friendship.  I mentioned this “fact” to my husband, who quickly noted that it was close to Harari’s observation in Sapiens that human societies change when their membership increases above 150, becoming more complex and often hierarchical.  Enter the blacksmith and the mayor….

Well, Gary is an extrovert who has lived in the same part of Minneapolis for almost his whole life.  He also worked for over 30 years in a position that thrust him into conversational spaces with faculty members from a more diverse group of departments than any other person at the University of Minnesota.  In other words, Gary is a social anomaly in our modern, mobile world. Many of the thousands of faculty and professional staff at the knew Gary, directly or indirectly and, coupled with his rootedness in the community,  I am sure he would recognize well over 150 people as pleasant acquaintances with whom he has shared conversations and food. As a thoughtful and interesting person, he could converse equally well with those immersed in Veterinary Medicine, Classics, or the Registrar’s office. His Christmas card list is long.  Distilled out of his hundreds of acquaintances is a core of 11 close friends who he has treasured for over 30 years.

As I reflected on his email, I felt small and a bit lonely!  I counted up my close friends (people I see or am in regular zoom contact and have known for 30+ years), and I could come up with only 3, or at a stretch, 4. I have no obvious social anxiety or deficiencies, so I had to starting thinking about why….

Unlike Gary, I have lived in four countries, 5 states and 16 distinct places. I graduated from high school and college at a time when a long-distance call cost real money.  My friends from those days are all highly mobile – none live where I grew up, and after college we all scattered across the globe.  And I more recently moved across several states.

When I think of a circle of friends, I go all the way back to junior high school and a a group that I had a 60th reunion with last year – that is me in the green sweater.  We live in different places, see each other every decade or so,  but we can start up a conversation as if no time had passed.  This means a lot: I feel joyful when I think of our shared adolescence and the interesting and fun people they continue to be.  I have not had a “circle of friends” like that since.

My friendships don’t fit neatly into a set of concentric circles that reflect differential “closeness” with me at the center.  As a member of overlapping national and international associations, I have a long-standing web of personal-professional relationships – people with whom I have regularly broken bread or shared coffee that that may be as large as Gary’s.  Whew – even though I am not a true extrovert, I seem to have a natural preference for connecting,  and when I think of the joy of finding someone who I really like in the lobby of a soulless hotel in a major city or another country, I smile. 

But I am retired, as are many of them. I am unlikely to travel to Florida just to see Joe or to Sweden to visit Olof and Helene, and we no longer have conferences that ensure meeting several times a year.  Still, looking back on the jokes, the work chatter interspersed with family life, the occasional sharing of hard stuff, music preferences, and furry companions, I know that they are much more than “acquaintances”.  It lightens my heart to know that I worked, over many years, in the company of people who mean much more to me than what they do or produce. 

A web is not a circle.  When I think of my “close friends” whom I have known for decades (and will get on an airplane to see) the list of expands a bit.  In this, I am in a community that ebbs and flows, a web where everyone is connected to others, directly or through me, and where we share the same feelings of care and concerns for each other.  I am not at the center and not at the edge, but our lives are intertwined even as they are separate. 

I am drawn to ask what we mean by friendship, beyond the obvious indicators of caring, trust, a sense of mutual intimacy and a shared sense of humor.  I have been  a mentor to many students, I have kept in regular touch with around 7, many of whom I have known for decades. Is that friendship, or something else?  Or the colleagues with whom I have shared years where we collaborated on projects that engaged us deeply?  They are so much more than acquaintances, yet not people who I would invite to a barbecue. I am grateful for each of them.  Karen Hering says that I  can claim them as companions on life’s journey.

In the end, I have decided that I can’t place people I have known within circles.  I want to remember them in the web of relationships that have meaning for me and for them – and that can be activated after many years with an email or a phone call to evoke a mutual burst of warmth and gratitude.