The Abbey of Friendship

I have never taken the time to watch the series Downton Abbey, but I did watch the most recent movie, and some things moved me deeply. Those who have a brief knowledge of the story would know that it is set in Edwardian England and is the story of some unusual friendships – including the one between the upper-crust owner of the household and his personal butler. There is a moment where the Lord goes to see his retired butler and, in that modest cottage, the strict lines of Edwardian protocol vanish. What appears instead is friendship - genuine, enduring, unburdened by class. The ingredients that build and nurture friendships were all there in that moment. In my life I have always found that friendship rests not on grand declarations, but on the little frequencies that keep two people tethered. A friend shares experiences. A friend imagines how much the other person would enjoy something and carries that thought along, almost as if joy is doubled when it is shared. In that conversation in the film there was that sharing, that demonstration of what friends can be like. Friendship insists on togetherness, on experiencing things side by side. In the modern world, long after the Edwardian era, it might be a walk, a meal, a movie, an aimless wandering - moments simple yet remembered precisely because they were not lived alone, but with a friend. When those cannot happen, friendship shows itself in the missing, that small ache of absence which proves that presence matters. And in the crowded theater of life, where many more important and perhaps many more special companions compete for time, a friend still manages to give a little. A moment here, a reply there, a call that says you still belong. To be included in someone’s life, even if only in fragments, is the quiet assurance that sustains the bond. This is not romance. It does not demand the intensity of passion or the exclusivity of devotion. But it is the repetition of these gestures - the picture, the thoughts, the shared time, the missing, the sliver of attention, the inclusion - that keeps a friendship alive. It is a frequency, not a crescendo, that makes the music of companionship. Yet not all ties live up to the word friendship. Some echo hollow, their presence marked more by absence than by closeness. No picture arrives across the day, no story is shared, no thought is carried forward of what the other might enjoy. The silence itself becomes the signal - a withholding where there should have been a gesture. A gesture like walking over to the cottage to have a chat. In these false friendships, togetherness is optional, almost unnecessary. Missing each other does not happen; instead, there is a casual forgetting, a drifting away with little notice. And when time is given, it is given reluctantly, parceled out only when no one else more interesting or useful is at hand. Inclusion turns into exclusion, or worse, into the performance of inclusion without the substance of it. The most dangerous quality of such false friendships is their ability to camouflage themselves under the safe words of trust and respect. The trust and respect between the Lord and the butler were palpable in that moment, not because the words were spoken, but because they were lived. Trust came with openness; respect was ratified in presence. Without openness and presence, friendship becomes counterfeit - it looks like the real thing, it even sounds like the real thing, but when pressed, it collapses. Psychologists remind us that friendships survive by openness and steady affirmation (Oswald, Clark, & Kelly, 2004). When those gestures vanish, what remains are only words. As Baumeister and Leary (1995) argued, the human “need to belong” is fundamental, but false friendship offers only a shadow of belonging - enough to keep someone waiting, not enough to make them feel included. True friendship, as demonstrated in that small scene in Downton Abbey, lies in the rhythm of small acts, repeated and steady. False friendship is the silence between the beats, decorated with words meant to disguise emptiness. It offers trust without risk, respect without presence, companionship without care. It is, finally, a counterfeit currency - merely a promise of belonging, and only when it is convenient. The real thing, as Bruno Mars sings, is this simple assurance: “You can count on me.” Anytime, anywhere, anyhow.