Ralph Waldo Emerson from "Friendship" (1841)
"I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know."
What is Friendship?
There is no single definition for what it means to be "friends." Researchers of philosophy, literature, psychology, sociology, biology and more have endeavored for centuries to understand our needs and fears with this most important of all relationships.
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In the past year, BBC and NPR have released segments exploring the challenges and rewards of different types of friendship. They asked, 'How have friends helped us through the pandemic?' and, 'What assumptions do we have about friendships?' A 2021 publication by Lu et al. in Frontiers in Psychology adds to these questions by challenging how the health benefits of friendships may vary culture by culture.
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The Department of Humanities & Politics community series, Story Booth, asked over 130 participants at Community Fest, "What would you say to your best friend, past or present, if you could say anything at all to them today?"
Out of over 130 participants, the most overwhelming message was one of thanks, the word "thanks" being used over thirty times. The second most frequently used word was "love." You can explore which words were used most frequently in our text visualizations.
Messages to Our Friends
Explore all 135 messages by theme below!