by Grace Pappadellis ’29 on April 16, 2026
Opinion - Society
I was once told that throughout your entire life, you’re lucky if you have one solid, supportive, loyal friend. Just one. I agree that not all people are on the same wavelength when it comes to their true purpose in having friends. For example, some friends stick around only during the good times, to have a good time. Some friends see relationships for their transactional purposes and material worth, while others don’t care to deepen a connection. Nevertheless, all these friendships, all the people you surround yourself with at one juncture to another juncture; they are arguably just as important to your life as that one, seemingly perfect friend.
I believe the depth of a friendship, the notion that a specific friend is most dear to you, stems from the simple idea that two people know each other, well, very well, for a long period of time. They’ve witnessed the changes of one another, possible struggles, maybe harsh realities or drastic shifts, and they remain in support of each other regardless. Oftentimes, these relationships begin at a young age; you’ve attended the same elementary schools, your parents are long-time friends, you’ve played youth sports together, or maybe you just sporadically aligned, and from that point on, you’ve been important, perhaps integral to each other’s livelihood. I’ve developed friendships of this caliber, childhood friendships that feel irreplaceable, and although my best friend from home knows the absolute most about me, sees me in a light that other friends of mine wouldn’t be able to decipher, I still find these other friendships to be just as important to me. There’s much to gauge about friendships; you meet people at different times in your life, you have no control over these meetings, these refreshing reminders that people you love will always, ubiquitously exist.
As you indulge in your future and promise yourself that you will make the right decisions even if they don’t seem right at the time, you’re bound to meet people in a simultaneous, natural fashion. These people are your gifts; they are reminders that you are lucky to love even when love and new relationships aren’t your main focus. To simply compare all of your friends on a scale without considering such factors does a disservice to your true appreciation of all the people you meet.
Without the friends that I’ve met in college, there would be a gaping hole in my life, a void of loneliness begging to be filled by endless streams of shared laughter and stories passed across rooms, our blankets pulled up to our chins as we bear the winter months together—thank God. To endure the suffocating snowfall and cutthroat gusts of wind by ourselves would be too much to ask of a person. These relationships that have grown through new college experiences, shared excitement, nervousness, hesitancy, the bursting, blooming process of self-identifying in a new place. They seem impenetrable and not possibly replicated by any other relationship from the past.
I once had a teacher in high school who liked to give lectures on how to choose the career best fit for you, even though he was supposed to be teaching personal finance planning. Although he often talked in circles and went off on rambling, sometimes ludicrous tangents, I was enthralled by the messages he intended to send beneath all of the roundabout stories. He told stories about people, his family, his friends, and colleagues, as if they were a talisman for his successes. He spoke about people with honor and gratitude, but also shared wisdom about those you must be weary of. Hearing about his experiences in other countries, how he raised his daughters, and how he decided to be a math teacher instead of focusing on linguistics, made his class feel like not so much a requirement to fill, but an hour and a half of my school day to think more inquisitively and ask real questions about real people, people who matter in someone’s life, and don’t matter in mine. It helped me become more observant. I had this teacher for only half a year; he taught a large class, and he never knew my older brother when he was in high school, like some of my other teachers.. I rarely spoke to him one-on-one, and math was always my least favorite subject. Regardless, he left an impact on me and deepened my adoration for those who have helped me in my life, while also pushing me to pay close attention to those who have made more latent impacts.
Separate from your close friends, there are many people to meet who may leave implicit traces, quiet, meaningful words, reassuring expressions, or even mere glances that will leave an impact on your life. The people you run into at random, they may say the right thing at the right time, or even the last thing you want to hear, but it steers you in the right direction, it clears the path that was once obstructed. They are part of the collective, significant grouping of all the people we meet. Value their subtleties; they may enlighten you just as much as the person who knows you the best.