Friendship Is Less Simple
“Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it.” ALBERT CAMUS · THE FALL
The narrator of The Fall is not a reliable guide to anything. Clamence is a former lawyer holed up in an Amsterdam bar, confessing at strangers, and much of what he says is designed to implicate you rather than inform you. Which makes this line more interesting, because it is accidentally true.
He is comparing friendship to easier attachments. Love can arrive in an afternoon. Friendship takes years and cannot be hurried, and then, once it exists, it refuses to go away simply because it has become inconvenient. You do not get to resign. You cope.
Anyone with an old friend recognizes this. The one whose politics have drifted somewhere you cannot follow. The one who tells the same story every time. The one who was there the week your father died and has therefore earned a permanence that no newer person can match.
Clamence says it with a sneer. Read it straight and it comes close to a definition. Friendship is the relationship you cannot get rid of, which is exactly what makes it worth the years it cost.
Today, contact the old friend you have been finding inconvenient.
