• 02 Nov, 2025 *

* Eric Krueger, circa Y2K. *

I used to think friendship worked like card collecting: as you go through life, you meet folks. Some folks you resonate with more. Of those, the ones you cross some invisible threshold with get added to the collection!

Sorta mathematic. How naive.

Card-Collecting

Coming of age seemed to be a process of recognizing I was a bad collector.

During the transitioning from high school → college, conveniently-timed summer breaks left ample time for reconnecting with childhood friends. But the transition from college to the real world hit harder. Between the loss of summer check-ins, the gain of full employment, and the change in the structure and frequency of social engagements; little time was left for friends—old or new.

I woke up one day realizing it had been years since I’d seen my high school and college friends. I was losing all my cards.

Fading Connections

I’ve since realized my original model of maintaining friendship wasn’t accurate: friendship is less card-collecting-like and more plant-keeping-like (to be sure, a novel analogy).

Like plants, friends receiving less attention fade. What’s always been interesting to me is why? Why are some connections—primarily early and young adult—stronger than others? It’s always seemed much less natural finding the same (depth of) friendship as an adult. Applying the plant analogy: what makes those early-life plants thrive?

Certainly, we can start with environment. It’s hard to imagine other real-world situations that gave me as much free time and excuses to be with others as my childhood and young adult life. Connections in the real world feel less deep because they are less deep - I’ve been through less with these people! No late nights studying, no road-trips; no roommates.

In the real world, it’s almost impossible for me to water my plants with such frequency! And that’s okay, but it does make me appreciate some of the gorgeous plants I got to enjoy. Sometimes, I find myself missing ’em.

Finding A Rule

I heard once that friends are in your life for a reason, season, or lifetime. I like that because it sorta rhymes, and because it feels true (maybe because it sorta rhymes it feels true).

More recently though, I heard a different version: friendship is based on proximity, stage of life, and energy (doesn’t rhyme, but feel more true). When considering why childhood and young adult friends create such strong bonds, applying this theory makes it immediately obvious. Proximity? ✅ Stage of life? ✅ Energy? ✅

And, when viewed against the backdrop of the plant-keeping theory of friendship, the rules align:

• Proximity - like plants needing resources (water, sun, air, etc.); friends nourish each other. To be removed from the presence of a friend is to shade the plant.
• Stage of Life - dictates the environment around you. A married, middle-aged, mid-career woman with two kids who lives in the suburbs with her family has a day-to-day environment that contrasts significantly with a single, college-grad, waitress who lives in the city with two roommates. It’s analogous to exposing the friendship plant to a completely different biome with different weather patterns, exposure levels, and adaptive needs. Naturally an impossible adaptation/survival challenge for most plants.
• Energy - is that special connection that makes you enjoy spending time with someone. Given the right environmental conditions lots of plants can thrive. But it’s energy is what draws you in; the natural affinity that makes you want to have one in your home.

The nature of real friendship is biological in nature.

Lessons From Biology

It’s good to know that what makes your friends ‘your friends’ is, at least partially, a function of external factors. Which means good friends are to be cherished like the rare commodity they are. The confluence of events that made the formative connection to distant old friends possible should be appreciated. Further, it highlights the imperative of remembering the factors you can influence.

• The easiest way to keep friends in your life plants alive is to hang out with them water them.
• Don’t try too hard to keep a friendship alive get a cactus to grow with someone in a totally different stage of life in the snow.
• In a world filled with all kinds of people plants—find the ones that you like the most, and fill your home with them!

Lastly, when the connection fades due to environmental factors—reflect upon the situation not with sadness, but with the knowledge that departure is as natural and necessary as arrival. As plants at the end of their life are returned back to the soil in support the ecosystem, the loss of a friend is the gift of their presence to another. And for the ones who are especially important to you—what a gift that they be shared! After all, we’re all here for a short time, and there are so, so many of us to know.

#word_smatter