What Is the Purpose of Friendship?

A little over a year ago, a friendship that had been part of my life for twenty-five years came to an end.

Recently, as that anniversary came and went, I found myself reflecting on it. What surprised me wasn’t that I was thinking about the friendship—it was how I was thinking about it.

I wasn’t replaying old conversations or wishing things had turned out differently. I wasn’t trying to figure out who was right or wrong.

Instead, I found myself becoming curious.

Not about that friendship.

About friendship itself.

As I walked one of my favorite trails here in Washington, I realized I wasn’t asking why this friendship had ended. I was asking something much bigger.

What is the purpose of friendship?

It struck me that we regularly evaluate almost every important part of our lives.

We evaluate our careers.

Our health.

Where we live.

The habits we’ve developed.

The goals we’re pursuing.

We periodically stop and ask, Is this still aligned with the life I’m trying to create?

Yet many of us rarely ask that same question about our friendships.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve adopted the idea that if a friendship has lasted a long time, it must be a successful one.

We’ve known each other since college.

Our kids grew up together.

We’ve been friends for thirty years.

Those statements tell us something about a friendship’s history.

They don’t necessarily tell us anything about the friendship today.

History explains how a friendship began.

It doesn’t answer whether it’s still helping both people become who they’re capable of becoming.

That isn’t a judgment.

It’s simply something I’ve come to notice.

Life changes us.

Or at least, it has the opportunity to.

The people we are today aren’t the same people we were twenty years ago. Our values evolve. Our priorities shift. We discover new interests, experience unexpected losses, celebrate new joys, and gradually become different versions of ourselves.

Wouldn’t it make sense that our friendships evolve too?

One thing nature has been teaching me lately is that living things are always changing.

Trails don’t stay the same.

A winter storm brings down a tree.

Rain slowly reshapes the earth beneath your feet.

Wildflowers reclaim part of the path.

The trail you’ve walked for years may eventually lead somewhere different—not because it failed, but because the landscape kept living.

I’ve started wondering if friendships are more like trails than monuments.

We often treat friendships like monuments.

Something to preserve.

Something to admire because it’s lasted.

But perhaps friendships are meant to be living paths.

Paths that invite us to keep walking.

To keep growing.

To keep noticing.

And to recognize that the relationship serving us today may not look exactly like the one that served us twenty years ago.

I’ve also noticed that many friendships begin because life naturally brings two people together.

We work in the same office.

We become neighbors.

Our children are the same age.

We’re navigating similar seasons.

Shared circumstances create proximity.

Sometimes that proximity grows into a lifelong friendship.

Sometimes it becomes a meaningful chapter that eventually reaches its natural conclusion.

Neither outcome diminishes the value of what was shared.

I’ve long been drawn to the idea that people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.

The older I get, the less that feels like a cliché and the more it feels like something life quietly reveals over and over again.

Some people arrive carrying exactly what we need at a particular moment.

Some walk beside us while we’re becoming someone new.

A precious few continue growing alongside us for decades.

I’ve never found that sad.

If anything, I’ve found it comforting.

Because it reminds me that the value of a friendship isn’t measured first by its duration.

It’s measured by what becomes possible while two people are walking together.

Over the past year, I’ve also found myself asking a different set of questions.

Not about other people.

About myself.

Who am I becoming in this friendship?

What are we creating together?

Do I leave feeling lighter…or heavier?

Are we growing together…or simply remembering together?

And perhaps the question that has lingered with me the longest…

If we met today, would we become friends?

I’ve never found that question harsh.

I’ve found it clarifying.

Because it gently shifts my attention away from obligation and back toward intention.

It reminds me that evaluating a friendship isn’t the same as judging a person.

Those are two very different things.

Evaluation isn’t condemnation.

It’s paying attention.

It’s becoming curious about whether a relationship still reflects the lives both people are trying to build.

Sometimes the answer is yes.

Sometimes a friendship deepens in beautiful, unexpected ways.

Sometimes it changes shape.

And sometimes two good people simply continue growing—but in different directions.

That doesn’t mean the friendship failed.

Perhaps it simply completed the work it came to do.

When I think about the friendships that have shaped my life, I don’t remember them primarily because of how long they lasted.

I remember how I felt while walking beside those people.

I remember the laughter.

The conversations that stretched my thinking.

The moments when I felt deeply understood.

The adventures.

The honesty.

The freedom to be completely myself.

I’ve come to notice that the healthiest friendships don’t ask us to become smaller in order to preserve the relationship.

They make room for growth.

They celebrate change instead of resisting it.

They create space where both people become more fully themselves.

Maybe that’s the real purpose of friendship.

Not simply to collect years together.

Not to prove our loyalty through longevity.

Not to preserve the past.

But to quietly shape one another’s lives in ways that leave us wiser…

Kinder…

More courageous…

More curious…

And more fully ourselves.

When I look back on the people who have walked beside me, I find myself feeling grateful.

Grateful for those who are still walking with me.

Grateful for those whose trails eventually diverged from mine.

Because every meaningful friendship leaves something behind.

Not footprints.

A different way of seeing.

And perhaps that’s the truest measure of a friendship.

Not how long two people walked together…

But who they became because they did.